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JOHNS  HOPKINS  UNIVERSITY  STUDIES 


IN 


Historical  and  Political  Science 

HERBERT  B.  ADAMS,  Editor 


History  is  past  Politics  and  Politics  are  present  History.— Freeman 


FOURTEENTH  SERIES 
IV-V 

Slavery  and  Servitude  in  the  Colony 
of  North  Carolina 

By  John  Spencer  Bassett,  Ph.  D.  (J.  H.  U.) 

Professor  of  History  and  Political  Science  in  Trinity  College, 
North  Carolina 


baltimore 
The  Johns  Hopkins  Press 

PUBLISHED    MONTHLY 

April  and  Slay,  1896 


Copyright,  1836,  by  The  Johns  Hopkins  Press. 


THE  FRIEDENWAI/D  CO.,  PRINTERS, 
BALTIMORE. 


AUTHORITIES  USED. 

Colonial  Records  of  North  Carolina;  compiled  by  Col.  W.  L. 
Saunders,  ten  volumes,  1886-1890. 

Laws  of  North  Carolina.     Revisions  of  1715,  1752,  1765,  and  1773. 

Brickell.     Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  1737. 

Hawks.     History  of  North  Carolina,  1858. 

Weeks.  Church  and  State  in  North  Carolina,  Johns  Hopkins 
University  Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science,  Eleventh 
Series,  Nos.  V.  and  VI. 

Debates  of  the  Convention  of  1835. 

Brackett.     The  Negro  in  Maryland,  1889. 

Steiner.  History  of  Slavery  in  Connecticut,  Johns  Hopkins  Uni- 
versity Studies  in  Historical  and  Political  Science,  Eleventh  Series, 
Nos.  IX.  and  X. 

Ballagh.  White  Servitude  in  the  Colony  of  Virginia,  ibid.,  Thir- 
teenth Series,  Nos.  VI.  and  VII. 

Bassett.  The  Constitutional  Beginnings  of  North  Carolina,  ibid., 
Twelfth  Series,  No.  III. 

Landholding  in  the   Colony  of  North   Carolina,   The   Law 

Quarterly  Review  (London),  April,  1895. 

Doyle.  The  English  Colonies  in  America:  Virginia,  Maryland 
and  the  Carolinas. 

Battle.  Address  on  the  Life  and  Services  of  Brigadier-General 
Jethro  Sumner,  1891. 

Biggs.  A  Concise  History  of  the  Kehukee  Baptist  Association, 
1834. 

Bernheim.  German  Settlements  and  Lutheran  Churches  of  the 
Carolinas,  1872. 

Fiske.     The  Discovery  of  America,  1892. 

A  Narrative  of  some  of  the  Proceedings  of  the  North  Carolina 
Yearly  Meeting  on  the  Subject  of  Slavery  within  its  Limits,  1848; 
published  by  the  Committee  for  Sufferings. 


PREFATORY  NOTE. 

The  story  of  the  negro  in  the  colony  of  North  Carolina 
must  be  reconstructed  out  of  very  unsatisfactory  materials. 
If  any  point  in  this  monograph  should  not  appear  to  be 
treated  fully  enough  it  must  be  considered  as  due  to  that 
cause.  Any  suggestion  of  further  facts  on  the  subject  will 
be  duly  appreciated. 

I  desire  to  acknowledge  my  indebtedness  for  assistance 
to  Drs.  Adams,  Steiner,  and  Ballagh,  of  the  historical  depart- 
ment of  the  Johns  Hopkins  University,  and  to  President 
L.  L.  Hobbs,  of  Guilford  College,  North  Carolina. 

J.  S.  B. 

Durham,  N.  C,  February  5,  1896. 


CONTENTS. 

Chapter  I.    The  Introduction  of  Slavery. 

The  Conditions  of  Settlement 11 

Estimate  of  Numbers 19 

Importation 22 

Distribution  of  Slaves 24 

Chapter  II.    The  Legal  Status  op  Slavery. 

Laws  relating  to  Slavery 27 

The  Slave  in  Court 28 

Kunaways 32 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Hunt 36 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Travel 39 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Property 40 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Life 42 

Chapter  III.    Religious  and  Social  Life  of  the  Slaves. 

Religion 45 

Social  Life 56 

Slave  Insurrections 60 

Chapter  IV.    The  Free  Negro  and  Indian  Slaves. 

Emancipation 65 

Free  Negroes 66 

Indian  Slavery 71 

Chapter  V.    White  Servitude 75 


SLAVERY  AND  SERVITUDE  IN  THE  COLONY 
OF  NORTH  CAROLINA. 


CHAPTER  I. 

THE  INTRODUCTION  OF  SLAVERY. 

The  lives  of  the  American  slaves  were  without  annals, 
and  to  a  large  extent  without  conscious  purpose.  To  get 
the  story  of  their  existence  there  is  no  other  way  than  to 
follow  the  tracks  they  have  made  in  the  history  of  another 
people.  This  will  be  a  slow  and,  in  a  sense,  an  unsatisfac- 
tory labor.  At  best  it  can  give  but  a  partial  picture  of  the 
real  life  of  the  slaves,  yet  it  can  give  all  there  is  to  give. 
Those  who  in  these  days  of  a  clearer  view  and  a  broader 
sympathy  have  come  to  look  on  the  former  bondsmen  as 
a  race  having  their  proper  place  in  the  evolution  of  the 
human  family,  must  be  content  to  gather  up  as  many  facts 
as  can  be  found  and  to  regret  that  circumstances  have  made 
it  impossible  to  obtain  a  more  complete  story. 

To  have  come  to  America  as  a  slave  was  not  without  an 
advantage  to  the  negro,  however  disadvantageous  it  may  be 
for  his  historian.  The  progress  of  a  race  is  the  lengthen- 
ing of  the  experience  of  its  earliest  individuals.  As  each 
succeeding  generation  discovers  new  fields  of  knowledge, 
the  experience  of  the  former  generation  is  thrust  back  to  a 
stage  in  the  individual's  training  previous  to  that  which  is 
considered  the  summit  of  an  educated  life.  The  facts 
which  men  now  living  are  working  out  in  laboratory  and 
study  will  in  a  short  time  become  a  part  of  that  general 
store  of  experience  that  will  be  standard  knowledge  for  the 
schoolboy  of  the  coming  generation.  That  which  any  one 
learns  from  others  is  but  the  sum  of  the  contributions  made 


12  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [180 

by  those  who  have  already  lived.  The  experience  which 
was  the  contribution  of  the  earliest  man  must,  therefore, 
be  referred  to  a  very  early  stage  in  the  accumulation  of 
this  whole.  Since  his  day  the  race  has  been  but  lengthening 
his  life  by  successive  steps  in  progress. 

Now,  the  negro  when  he  came  to  America  was  far  back 
in  this  stage  of  progress.  It  is  usually  agreed  that  for  ages 
he  had  developed  none  at  all.  When  he  came  from  Africa 
he  came  into  contact  with  the  most  advanced  type  of  ex- 
perience in  the  history  of  man.  It  was  his  task  to  learn 
that  experience.  Viewing  the  matter  from  the  standpoint 
of  his  development,  it  was  his  chief  task  to  learn  it.  How 
could  he  best  learn  it?  The  answer  is,  he  must  learn  it  as 
another  person  who  stands  to  this  experience  in  the  same 
relation  with  the  negro,  that  is  to  say,  as  a  child.  The  same 
reasoning  which  in  all  social  systems  recognizes  the  ex- 
pediency of  placing  the  child  under  the  dominant  direction 
of  his  more  experienced  parent,  will  be  effective  in  showing 
that  in  the  days  of  the  earliest  contact  of  the  white  man  and 
the  black  man  it  was  a  useful  thing  for  the  latter  that  he 
took  his  first  lessons  in  civilization  in  the  rigorous  school 
of  slavery.  Hard  as  the  process  was  on  the  spirit  of  liberty 
in  the  black  man,  and  costly  as  it  proved  itself  in  the  life,  the 
treasure,  and  the  slow  development  of  the  white  man,  yet 
it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the  aimless,  good-natured,  and  im- 
provident African  could  ever  have  been  brought  as  a  race 
to  plow,  to  sow,  to  reap,  to  study,  and  at  length  to  create 
thought,  except  for  the  tutelage  of  his  slaveholding  master. 

The  coming  of  the  negro  to  the  New  World  was  due  to 
economic  causes.  It  arose  from  the  meeting  there  of  the 
two  conditions  of  an  abundant  supply  of  undeveloped 
wealth  and  of  a  scanty  supply  of  labor  with  which  to  develop 
it.  This  conjunction  was  due  to  a  sudden  widening  of  the 
spheres  of  industrial  activities  which  in  that  day  had  been 
forced  on  the  world.  It  was  abnormal  in  itself  and  it  led 
to  an  abnormal  method  of  meeting  it.  It  led  to  the  forcible 
taking  of  men  whose  weakness  made  them  unable  to  resist, 


181]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  13 

and  the  bringing  of  them  to  work  in  the  mines,  forests,  or 
fields  on  the  American  coasts.  As  these  two  unusual  con- 
ditions of  abundant  land  and  a  sparse  population  were  in  a 
measure  relieved,  the  bondage  that  they  had  brought  into 
the  world  ceased  to  grow,  and  then  gradually  grew  less. 
That  its  final  removal  was  accomplished  by  a  most  unhappy 
war  against  the  smaller  portion  of  this  original  slaveholding 
area  was  an  unfortunate  incident  of  the  progress. 

Conditions  in  the  South  were  favorable  to  slavery. :_  Large 
stretches  of  fertile  land,  warm  climate,  at  once  congenial  to 
the  negroes  and  enervating  to  the  whites,  and  in  some  places 
unhealthy  regions  where  white  men  did  not  care  to  work; 
all  these  helped  to  draw  slavery  to  America.  Planted  at 
first  in  the  Spanish  possessions  of  the  West  Indies,  it  spread 
as  soon  as  the  mainland  was  settled  along  the  entire  coast 
from  Jamestown,  both  northward  and  southward.  The 
method  by  which  this  extension  was  accomplished  is  inter- 
esting. It  may  be  divided  for  our  purposes  into  two  stages, 
an  experimental  stage  and  a  stage  of  diffusion. 

So  far  as  the  South  was  concerned,  the  experimental 
stage  in  the  development  of  American  slavery  belongs  to 
the  history  of  Virginia,  and  possibly  of  Maryland.  Chro- 
nologically speaking,  that  stage  belongs  to  the  seventeenth 
century.  The  Dutch  traders,  when  they  brought  their 
human  freight  to  Jamestown,  were,  according  to  the  ways 
of  trade,  trying  to  open  up  a  field  for  a  new  line  of  com- 
merce. The  planters  that  bought  this  new  commodity  did 
it  no  doubt  without  feeling  sure  that  it  would  be  a  success. 
They  found  the  Africans  to  be  untamed,  degraded,  super- 
stitious and  dull.  Could  they  make  these  into  steady  and 
reliable  laborers?  The  partial  success  of  the  West  Indies 
was  before  them,  and  they  set  out  to  try.  In  two  respects 
they  differed  materially  from  the  West  Indian  planters:  I. 
The  harsh  usage  of  the  Spaniards  in  the  latter  region  had 
destroyed  the  original  Indian  population,  so  that  the  whites 
were  relieved  of  the  ordinary  fear  of  Indian  atrocities.  In 
Virginia  it  was  not  till  toward  the  close  of  the  seventeenth 


14  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [182 

century  that  the  savages  were  driven  so  far  inland  that  the 
eastern  part  of  the  colony  was  safe  from  their  attacks. 
Manifestly  it  would  have  been  a  dangerous  affair  for  the 
colony  to  have  attempted  to  absorb  and  to  tame  a  large 
number  of  African  slaves  while  there  was  fear  of  the  Indians 
in  their  midst.  2.  The  nature  of  the  task  before  the  Vir- 
ginians was  different  from  that  before  the  West  Indians. 
The  latter  had  gone  into  the  business  with  the  idea  of  estab- 
lishing colonies  of  slaves,  driven  to  the  fields  and  back  to 
the  barracks  as  the  Indians  of  the  encomienda  or  as  the 
slaves  of  the  Roman  latifundium.  This  was  the  Spanish  ideal. 
The  ideal  of  the  Virginia  planter,  on  the  other  hand,  was 
that  of  the  English  country  gentleman.  He  expected  to 
live  on  his  estate  himself,  and  he  wanted  to  group  his  slaves 
around  him  where  he  would  know  them,  physic  them,  give 
them  in  marriage,  and  in  his  good-natured  way  train  and 
swear  at  each  one  individually.  To  accomplish  such  an 
ideal  demanded  a  great  deal  more  in  the  way  of  absorption 
than  was  necessary  in  the  Spanish  system.  It  would  take 
a  much  longer  period  of  training  to  make  the  negro  accep- 
table as  a  servant  according  to  the  Virginian's  idea  than 
according  to  the  Cuban's.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  usually 
took  two  or  three  generations  to  make  him  in  any  safe  sense 
tractable.  It  was  at  least  a  half-century  after  the  experi- 
ment began  before  Virginia  was  satisfied  that  its  issue  would 
be  favorable.  She  then  had  the  nucleus  of  a  slave  popula- 
tion which  henceforth,  both  by  natural  increase  and  by 
further  importation,  she  was  rapidly  to  make  an  extensive 
part  of  her  population. 

There  were  three  obstacles  which  everywhere  in  the  South 
it  was  necessary  to  have  removed  before  negro  slavery  could 
be  widely  diffused:  1.  The  Indians,  as  has  already  been 
said,  must  be  either  exterminated  or  driven  into  the  interior, 
so  that  there  should  be  no  danger  of  Indian  massacres.  2. 
The  white  population  must  become  dense  enough  to  be 
able  to  resist  an  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  negroes  to  strike 
for   freedom.     Tractable   as  the   negro   may   have  become 


183]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  15 

in  the  course  of  three  generations  of  slavery,  there  never  was 
a  time  when  he  became  so  submissive  that  he  could  be  con- 
sidered beyond  the  probability  of  an  insurrection.  The 
whites  understood  this,  and  not  until  they  had  reached  com- 
munities settled  to  a  tolerable  degree  of  density  did  they 
dare  to  introduce  a  large  number  of  negroes.  3.  The 
earliest  importation  of  a  class  of  laborers  into  the  New  World 
was  that  of  indented  white  servants.  Slavery  had  to  en- 
counter these  in  its  period  of  diffusion  in  all  the  Southern 
colonies.  There  was  a  struggle  between  the  two  systems. 
This  proved  itself  to  be  a  case  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest. 
The  negroes  were  fitter  to  be  slaves  than  the  whites  and 
they  remained  masters  of  the  field.  When  these  three 
obstacles  had  been  overcome  the  diffusion  of  slavery  over 
new  territory  might  go  on  prosperously. 

When  North  Carolina  was  beginning  to  be  settled,  slavery 
was  just  finishing  its  experimental  stage  in  Virginia.  The 
people  here  were  from  the  first  satisfied  with  the  profitable- 
ness of  slaves,  and  took  them  with  them  as  they  went  from 
the  lower  counties  of  Virginia  to  settle  plantations  on  the 
shores  of  the  Albemarle  Sound.  The  three  obstacles  to  diffu- 
sion they  found  it  necessary  to  surmount.  The  danger  of 
Indian  attacks  was  not  passed  till  17 12,  when,  having  defeated 
and  almost  exterminated  the  Tuscaroras,  they  found  them- 
selves no  longer  in  danger  from  such  a  source.  It  was  about 
the  same  time  that  the  people  became  densely  enough  settled 
to  be  able  to  handle  the  much  dreaded  negro  rebellions 
should  they  come.1  As  for  the  indented  servants,  as  will  be 
shown  later  on,  they  never  were  a  serious  factor  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  colony.  They  came  into  it  along  with  the  earliest 
settlers,  but  the  acceptance  of  slavery  in  Virginia  had  already 
sealed  their  fate.     They  never  became  numerous,  and  they 

1  It  is  of  interest  to  note  that  negroes  were  not  extensively  intro- 
duced into  Maryland  till  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century. 
(Cf.  Brackett,  "  The  Negro  in  Maryland,"  p.  38.)  They  were  not 
introduced  extensively  into  Virginia  until  near  the  end  of  the 
seventeenth  century  (cf.  Ballagh,  "  White  Servitude  in  Virginia," 
Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies,  Series  XIII.,  p.  349,  note). 


16  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [184 

were,  from  the  conditions  of  life,  never  a  very  satisfactory- 
kind  of  labor. 

The  manner  of  the  spread  of  slavery  after  it  had  once  en- 
tered the  settlement  is  of  interest.  It  reveals  clearly  the  whole 
process  by  which  the  country  yielded  itself  to  the  healthy 
ring  of  the  civilizing  axe.  A  lodgment  was  first  effected  in 
the  extreme  northwestern  part  of  the  colony,  most  of  the 
people,  free  and  slave,  coming  from  Virginia.  Either  from 
natural  increase,  or  from  the  capture  of  a  few  hostile  Indians, 
or  from  importation  from  Virginia  or  New  England,  there 
was  from  the  first  an  increasing  supply  of  slaves.  When  a 
farmer  moved  into  the  colony  he  usually  brought  one  or  two 
slaves  with  him,  or  he  bought  about  that  number  soon  after 
he  got  himself  settled.  To  settle  a  new  plantation  without 
negroes  was  considered  a  hopeless  task.1  Most  of  the  men 
that  came  in  to  settle  were  men  of  small  means,  and  they 
accordingly  took  up  small  farms.  Having  secured  a  piece 
of  land,  the  incomer  would  go  to  work  with  his  slaves  to 
clear  it,  to  plant  it,  and  to  build  a  house  on  it.  He  would  not 
need  much  cleared  land  at  first,  for  here  the  people  did  not 
devote  themselves  so  extensively  to  the  cultivation  of  tobacco 
as  in  Virginia.  They  had  fine  natural  ranges  for  stock  and 
raised  many  cattle  and  hogs  for  the  markets  to  the  north  of 
them.  If  the  farmer  were  thrifty  he  would  have  cleared  his 
farm  at  the  end  of  a  few  years,  or  at  least  as  much  of  it  as  he 
did  not  want  to  save  for  his  cattle  range.  At  that  time  his 
stock  of  negroes  would  have  increased.  His  most  natural 
course  now  was  to  take  up  another  tract  of  land,  to  divide 
his  cattle  and  negroes,  and,  under  the  care  of  an  overseer,  to 
place  a  part  on  this  new  farm.  This  land  cost  him  almost  noth- 
ing, and  if  he  did  no  more  than  support  his  slaves  and  cattle 
he  would  be  getting  wealthy  from  their  natural  increase.  With 
two  farms  stocked,  the  increment  of  gain  would  be  acceler- 
ated, and  in  a  short  time  a  third  could  be  taken  up.  Then 
would  come  a  fourth,  a  fifth,  and  in  the  course  of  a  lifetime  a 

1  Colonial  Records  of  North  Carolina,  I.,  pp.  41,  601,  715,  and  VI., 
745,  1026. 


185]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  17 

thrifty  man  might  acquire  a  number  of  farms,  each  of  which 
was  stocked  with  negroes.  This  process  was  checked  when 
the  available  land  for  settling  in  the  older  communities  had 
been  taken  up,  so  that  now  if  one  wanted  new  land  he  must 
go  some  distance  to  the  frontier.  When  such  a  stage  had 
been  reached  the  owner  would  begin  to  sell  his  slaves  to 
those  who  were  going  to  the  new  communities,  or  to  allot 
them  to  some  son  or  daughter  who  was  going  to  the  same 
place.  Thus  the  negro  went  side  by  side  with  the  white 
man  in  the  van  of  the  civilizing  forces  of  the  country. 

The  lords  proprietors  of  Carolina  recognized  the  value  of 
slaves  to  the  settlers  from  the  first.  In  the  Concessions  of 
1665,  their  earliest  announcement  of  terms  of  settlement  in 
Albemarle,  they  offered  to  give  every  master  or  mistress 
who  should  bring  slaves  into  the  province  fifty  acres  of 
land  for  each  slave  above  fourteen  years  of  age  so  imported.1 
This  custom,  with  slight  variation,  was  kept  up  during  the 
colonial  period.2  To  make  slavery  secure  in  its  legal  aspect 
the  proprietors  declared  in  the  famous  Fundamental  Consti- 
tutions that  all  masters  should  have  absolute  power  over  their 
negro  slaves.3  Thus  the  proprietors  recognized  the  value  of 
slaves  in  settling  the  lands.  As  long  as  the  colony  was  in 
the  hands  of  these  owners,  and  also  while  it  was  in  the  hands 
of  the  king,  slavery  enjoyed  all  the  immunity  that  was  im- 
plied in  these  conditions. 

Three  distinct  streams  of  immigrants  entered  North  Caro- 
lina.   1.  The  immigrants  from  Virginia  came  earliest.    These 

1  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  86. 

2  It  is  embodied  in  the  instructions  to  Governor  Burrington  in 
1730  (Col.  Recs.,  III.,  101-102);  in  those  to  Governor  Dobbs  in 
1754  (ibid.,  V.,  1 133);  and  in  those  to  Governor  Tryon  in  1765 
(ibid.,  VII.,  127).  It  is  likely  it  was  in  that  of  Governor  Martin 
in  1771,  which  unfortunately,  it  has  been  impossible  to  examine. 
It  is  well  to  note,  however,  that  Gov.  Johnston  in  1735  said  he 
knew  of  no  such  instruction.  The  leaders  of  the  colonists  declared 
that  such  had  been  the  custom.  It  was  decided  not  to  follow  the 
custom,  but  how  long  this  was  enforced  does  not  appear  (cf.  ibid., 
IV.,  60). 

3  Ibid.,  I.,  204. 


18  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [18b 

came  in  two  rather  well  discerned  movements.  The  former 
was  that  early  movement  of  men  of  small  means  who  came 
down  into  the  unoccupied  lands  on  the  tributaries  of  the 
Albemarle  Sound.  They  were  not  powerful  and  their  settle- 
ments developed  slowly.  To  them  chiefly  does  the  history  of 
the  colony  in  the  seventeenth  century  belong.  They  brought 
a  few  slaves  with  them,  though  from  the  scarcity  of  records 
for  this  period  we  have  very  little  idea  of  how  many  came 
or  under  what  circumstances  they  lived.  The  latter  of  these 
two  movements  from  Virginia  came  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  or  perhaps  a  little  earlier,  and  filled  up 
the  counties  in  the  northern  and  central  part  of  the  State. 
Edgecombe,  Northampton,  Halifax,  Bute,  and  a  part  of 
Granville  received  the  force  of  this  movement.  The  people 
were  largely  the  younger  members  of  leading  families  in  the 
northern  colony,  who  took  their  slaves  and  moved  south  to 
build  fortunes  for  themselves  where  land  was  cheaper.  In 
some  cases  they  were  members  of  these  same  families  whose 
extravagant  living  had  made  it  necessary  for  them  to  gather 
up  the  fragments  of  property  they  still  had  left  and  to  begin 
life  again  on  the  frontier.1  These  all  brought  slaves,  and  they 
used  large  numbers  of  them.  2.  The  southeastern  part  of 
the  State  was  geographically  distinct  from  the  northeastern 
part.  It  remained  for  many  years  unsettled.2  About 
1730  Governor  Burrington  succeeded  in  turning  immi- 
grants in  that  direction.  These  people  took  up  the  rich 
lands  around  Brunswick  and  Wilmington,  and  gradually 
extended  westward  till  they  reached  Bladen,  Cumberland, 
and  Anson  counties.  This  stream  brought  slaves  with  it 
also.  Having  a  good  harbor,  it  attracted  many  people  of 
means,  not  a  few  coming  from  South  Carolina,  and  the  rich 
lands  along  the  lower  Cape  Fear  soon  came  to  be  occupied 
by  many  rich  and  well-bred  planters.     This  section  had  a 

1  See  Dr.  K.  P.  Battle's  "  Address  on  the  Life  and  Services  of 
General  Jethro  Sumner,"  p.  15. 

2  No  account  is  here  taken  of  the  Yeamans  colony,  which  soon 
removed,  and  which  accordingly  made  no  impression  on  the  history 
of  the  province. 


187]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  19 

considerable  trade  with  Europe,  the  West  Indies,  and  the 
other  colonies,  and  it  is  likely  that  it  received  most  of  its 
slaves  through  that  trade.  It  became  the  most  prosperous 
slaveholding  section  of  the  colony.  3.  While  this  region 
was  being  occupied,  the  van  of  a  third  body  was  entering 
another  part  of  the  colony.  Starting  from  Pennsylvania  it 
came  down  the  valleys  of  western  Virginia  and  settled  the 
central  and  western  part  of  North  Carolina.  It  was  com- 
posed of  Scotch-Irish,  Germans,  a  few  Welch,  some  New 
Englanders,  some  New  Jerseymen,  and  not  a  few  who  from 
one  or  another  place  had  already  settled  on  the  Virginia 
frontier.  These  were  almost  always  small  farmers,  owning 
little  property  and  very  few  slaves.  Except  for  a  few  wealthy 
men  who  later  came  in  from  Virginia,  or  who  came  up  as 
officers  of  the  law  from  the  older  settlements  in  the  east, 
they  took  small  holdings  of  land  and  set  out  to  clear  and 
cultivate  them  with  their  own  hands.  As  they  progressed 
in  wealth  they  yielded  to  the  influence  of  environment,  and 
slaves  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  were  being  used  in 
considerable  numbers  among  them.  They  were,  however, 
never  so  strongly  slaveholding  as  the  east.  It  is  well  to 
remember  that  this  section,  especially  the  western  part  of  it, 
remained  till  the  Civil  War  the  center  of  the  anti-slavery 
sentiment  of  the  State. 

Estimate  of  Numbers. — To  estimate  the  number  of  slaves 
in  North  Carolina  at  any  time  in  the  first  seventy-five  years 
of  its  existence  is  a  very  difficult  matter.  The  colony  was 
during  this  period  increasing  in  population  very  slowly,  and 
it  was  not  till  the  end  of  the  Tuscarora  war,  1712,  that  the 
introduction  of  slaves  may  be  considered  as  unimpeded.  In 
1709  Reverend  John  Adams,  a  missionary  of  the  Church  of 
England,  wrote  that  there  were  in  Pasquotank  precinct  1332 
souls,  of  whom  211  were  negroes,1  while  in  Currituck  precinct 
there  were  539  souls,  97  of  whom  were  negroes.2     Thus  in 

1  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  720. 

2  Ibid.,  I.,  722.  There  were  at  that  time  four  settled  precincts  in 
the  colony.  Besides  these,  there  was  a  new  county,  Pamlico,  on 
the  river  of  that  name,  which  contained  probably  about  as  many 
people  as  one  of  the  older  precincts.  These  were  the  only  white 
settlements  in  the  colony. 


20  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [188 

each  of  these  two  precincts  about  one-sixth  of  the  whole 
population  was  black.  It  is  likely  that  this  proportion  was 
correct  for  all  the  precincts.  Inasmuch  as  Chowan  and 
Perquimons  precincts  were  older  and  in  some  respects  more 
thriving  places,  it  is  likely  that  they  contained  over  400 
negroes.  Pamlico,  too,  must  have  had  some  blacks;  so  that 
it  is  a  safe  estimate  to  say  that  at  this  time  there  were  about 
800  negroes  in  the  colony.1  In  171 7  Colonel  Pollock,  who 
was  one  of  the  most  intelligent  men  of  the  early  period  of  the 
colony's  history,  estimated  the  number  of  taxable  persons  in 
the  country  at  2000.2  Now,  by  a  law  of  the  Assembly  of 
1 71 5  all  negroes  of  twelve  years  or  more,  male  or  female, 
and  all  male  whites  of  sixteen  years  or  more,  were  to  be 
taxed.3  We  know  that  in  1850  the  ratio  of  negroes  over 
twelve  years  of  age  to  the  entire  negro  population  was  as  ten 
to  eighteen,  and  that  the  ratio  of  whites  over  sixteen  to 
the  entire  white  population  was  as  ten  to  forty.  So  if  we 
suppose  there  to  be  still  six  times  as  many  whites  as  blacks, 
then  we  may  estimate  the  number  of  whites  in  the  province 
at  about  6000  and  the  blacks  at  about  noo.4  In  1730  Gov- 
ernor Burrington  wrote  that  the  whites  in  the  colony  were 
"  full  30,000,  and  the  negroes  about  6000."  £  We  have  no 
further  estimate  until  1754.  In  that  year  we  have  the  first 
census  of  the  colony,  so  far  as  the  records  show.  The  clerks 
of  the  several  county  courts,  by  instruction,  made  a  return  to 
the  Governor  of  all  the  taxables  in  their  respective  counties. 

1  Dr.  Hawks  says  ("  History  of  North  Carolina,"  II.,  340)  that  in 
1700  there  were  6000  whites  in  the  colony.  If  we  put  the  propor- 
tion of  blacks  to  whites  at  one-sixth,  this  will  give  us  about 
1000  blacks  in  1700,  a  number  that  would  have  been  considerably 
larger  by  1709.  Perhaps  a  better  estimate  would  be  midway  between 
the  800  and  1000. 

2  Col.   Recs.,  II.,  p.  xvii. 

3  Ibid.,  II.,  889. 

4  In  1720  Boone  and  Barnwell,  of  South  Carolina,  put  the  total 
number  of  taxables  at  1600.  They  were  probably  mistaken.  They 
did  not  know  the  colony,  and  their  language  shows  that  they  bore 
it  no  goodwill.  Pollock  is  a  much  safer  authority  (cf.  Col.  Recs., 
II.,  396  and  419). 

5  Ibid.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  xvii. 


189]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  21 

The  blacks  were  9128  and  the  whites  1 5,733/  If  we 
follow  the  ratios  just  estimated  on  the  basis  of  the 
census  of  1850  we  shall  have  a  total  negro  popula- 
tion of  about  15,000,  and  a  total  white  population  of  62,000. 
Thus  there  was  in  the  province  an  entire  population 
of  77,000.  Governor  Dobbs  pronounced  the  census  of  1754 
defective,  the  people,  as  he  said  he  had  learned,  holding  back 
their  taxables.2  The  error  could  not  have  been  very  great, 
for  when  a  year  later  he  himself  ordered  a  more  correct 
return  the  total  number  of  negro  taxables  was  9831,  five 
counties  being  estimated  in  the  manner  just  stated.3  Another 
census  was  made  in  the  same  way  in  1756,  when  it  appeared 
that  there  were  10,800  negro  taxables,  five  counties  still  be- 
ing estimated/  and  about  15,000  white  taxables,  giving  totals 
of  about  19,000  blacks  and  60,000  whites.5  In  1761  Governor 
Dobbs,  writing  to  the  home  government  on  the  condition  of 
the  colony,  reported  that  there  were  not  12,000  negro  tax- 
ables in  its  borders,  and  he  added  that  the  increase  in  the 
entire  population  came  mostly  from  births,  since  but  few 
people  had  come  in  since  the  French  and  Indian  War." 
In  1764  he  placed  the  number  at  10,000/  so  that  we  must 
put  his  estimate  at  some  point  between  these  two  numbers. 
This  was  a  very  erroneous  estimate,  however;  for  the  very 
next  year  a  census  was  taken  by  the  method  formerly  used, 
and  it  appeared  that  there  were  in  the  colony  17,370  negro, 
and  28,542  white,  tithables.8  On  this  basis  the  entire  popula- 
tion must  have  been  about  30,000  blacks  and  114,000  whites. 
Another  census,  made  in  1766,  gives  21,281  negro  taxables/ 
eleven  counties  being  estimated,  and  the  figures  of  two  more 

1  The  returns  for  five  counties  do  not  distinguish  between  white 
and  black  taxables.  In  such  cases  the  number  of  blacks  has  been 
estimated  on  the  basis  of  the  whites  and  blacks  in  all  the  other 
counties,  which  cannot  be  very  far  wrong  (ibid.,  V.,  320). 

2  Ibid.,  V.,  461  and  471.        3  Ibid.,  V.,  575.        4  Ibid.,   V.,  603. 

5  These  returns  must  be  very  unreliable.  That  of  1756  shows 
that  in  a  majority  of  the  counties  the  estimates  had  not  been 
revised  since  1755.  This  accounts  for  the  great  increase  when  we 
come  to  the  returns  for  1765. 

6  Ibid.,  VI.,  613-614.  7  Ibid.,  VI.,  1027  and  1040. 
8  Ibid.,  VII.,   145.                                  9  Ibid.,  VII.,  288-9. 


22  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [190 

being  taken  from  the  returns  of  1765.  This  would  give  a 
total  negro  population  of  37,000.  A  census  taken  in  1767 
gives  22,600  black,  and  29,000  white,  taxables,1  eight  counties 
being  estimated.  This  would  be  a  total  of  about  39,000 
blacks  and  116,000  whites.  These  are  the  official  returns, 
and  constitute  our  only  means  of  knowing  with  any  degree 
of  certainty  how  many  negroes  there  were  in  the  province. 
It  ought  to  be  stated  that  in  1772  Governor  Martin  wrote  to 
the  British  Government  that  he  had  discovered  that  the 
former  governors  had  overestimated  the  number  of  negroes 
and  that  the  statement  could  be  proved.  He  promised  to  cor- 
rect the  mistake,2  but  we  have  no  evidence  that  he  ever  ful- 
filled the  promise.  He  continued  to  believe  in  his  theory, 
however;  for  in  1775,  when  he  was  a  fugitive  from  the  seat 
of  his  government,  he  wrote  that  there  were  very  few  negroes 
in  North  Carolina,  except  in  two  or  three  counties  in  the  ex- 
treme southeastern  part  of  the  government,  and  that  he  did 
not  think  that  there  were  over  10,000  in  the  whole  country.3 
In  the  absence  of  any  specific  proof  to  sustain  Governor 
Martin's  position  we  must  give  the  probability  to  the  official 
reports,  although  the  matter  continues  in  more  doubt  than 
could  be  wished. 

Unsatisfactory  as  these  figures  are,  they  indicate  a  tendency 
which  is  not  wholly  uninstructive.  In  1709  about  one-sixth 
of  the  population  was  black.  In  171 7  the  ratio  was  about 
the  same.  In  1730  it  was,  according  to  Burrington,  still  the 
same.  In  1754  there  was  a  tendency  for  the  ratio  to  rise,  it 
being  about  ten  to  fifty-one.  In  1765,  when  we  come  to 
a  new  census — those  of  1755  and  1756  are  of  slight  use — we 
find  the  ratio  still  rising,  it  being  now  ten  to  forty-eight.  In 
1767  it  has  risen  till  it  is  ten  to  thirty-nine.  Thus  we  see  that 
while  the  colony  was  growing  slowly  and  was  thinly  settled, 
the  ratio  of  blacks  to  whites  remained  comparatively  con- 
stant, but  that  after  the  French  and  Indian  War  the  negroes 
began  rapidly  to  gain. 

Importation. — The  steadiness  of  this  increase  for  so  long 
a  time  indicates  that  it  was  due  almost  wholly  to  births. 

1  Col.  Recs.,  VII.,  539-         2  Ibid.,  IX.,  259.         3  Ibid.,  X.,  46. 


191]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  23 

Such  rare  information  as  we  have  on  this  point  shows  that 
the  number  imported  was  inconsiderable.  When  a  person 
took  advantage  of  the  custom  giving  each  newcomer  fifty- 
acres  of  land  for  each  slave  he  brought  with  him,  it  was 
necessary  for  him  to  go  into  the  county  court  and  prove  the 
fact  of  importation.  The  records  of  these  courts,  so  far  as 
we  have  them,  show  that  very  few  persons  proved  their  rights 
to  land  on  this  account.  For  example,  in  the  court  of  Per- 
quimons  precinct  in  1706,  at  which  land  was  granted  for  im- 
porting sixty-nine  persons,  there  are  only  four  of  these  sixty- 
nine  of  whom  we  are  sure  that  they  were  negroes,  although 
there  are  six  more  whose  names  may  be  those  of  negroes; 
and  all  of  these  were  imported  by  two  men.1  The  king  did 
all  he  could  to  facilitate  the  sale  of  slaves  to  the  colonist  by 
the  Royal  African  Company.  In  1730  Burrington  was  in- 
structed to  report  on  the  condition  of  the  company's  trade  in 
North  Carolina.2  That  officer  replied  that  up  to  that  year 
this  trade  had  been  small,  but  that  he  thought  that  he  could 
improve  its  condition.3  It  was  probably  with  the  same  sub- 
ject in  mind  that  he  reported  three  years  later  that  the 
colonists  had  suffered  greatly  from  not  buying  slaves  directly 
from  Africa.  He  added  that  under  existing  circumstances 
they  had  been  "  under  necessity  to  buy  the  refuse,  refractory 
and  distempered  negroes  brought  from  other  governments," 
whereas  it  would,  he  did  not  doubt,  be  an  easy  matter  to 
sell  a  shipload  of  good  negroes  in  almost  any  part  of  the 
province.4  In  a  like  spirit  the  king  instructed  Governor 
Dobbs,  in  1754,  not  to  allow  the  Assembly  to  pass  any  law 
which  would  prohibit  the  importation  of  slaves  or  felons,5  as 
had  been  done  in  some  colonies.  The  Assembly  gave  the 
Governor  no  occasion  to  enforce  this  instruction.6    The  con- 

lCol.  Recs.,  I.,  649-656.  2  Ibid.,  III.,  115-116.   3  Ibid.,  III.,  154-155. 

4  Ibid.,  III.,  430.  "Ibid.,  V.,  1118. 

8  In  Virginia,  in  1708,  Governor  Jennings  reported  that  in  the 
past  nine  years  the  Royal  African  Company  had  imported  into 
Virginia  679  negroes,  while  from  other  sources  had  come  5928. 
The  reason  for  this  state  of  affairs  is  not  given  (cf.  N.  C.  Col.  Recs., 
I.,  693).  About  the  same  time  Brickell  wrote  that  the  planters 
saved  most  of  their  coin  "  to  buy  negroes  with  in  the  islands  and 
other  places"  (Nat.  Hist,  of  N.  C.,  p.  45;  also  p.  272). 


24  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [192 

ditionj  of  importation  may  be  seen  from  the  fact  that  in  1754 
only  nineteen  negroes  were  entered  in  the  custom-house  at 
Bath,  and  that  the  average  number  brought  into  Beaufort  for 
the  preceding  seven  years  was  seventeen.1  In  1772  Governor 
Martin  estimated  that  the  total  number  imported  into  the 
province  in  eight  months  did  not  exceed  200.2  These  num- 
bers refer  undoubtedly  to  the  number  brought  into  the 
province  through  its  custom-houses.  The  inefficient  naval 
officers  at  the  ports  doubtless  let  a  considerable  number  more 
than  these  come  in  without  any  duties  paid,  and  there  was 
always  a  number  brought  down  by  the  land  routes  from 
Virginia.  There  is  reason  to  believe  that  the  latter  route 
was  the  way  by  which  most  of  the  slaves  came. 

Distribution  of  Slaves. — Mention  has  already  been  made  of 
the  three  movements  of  immigration  which  carried  slaves 
into  the  colony.  The  eastern  part  of  the  country,  speaking 
broadly,  was  strongly  slaveholding.  The  western  part  was, 
for  a  time,  almost  free  territory,  ancTnever  had  as  many 
slaves  as  the  east.  This  was  due  to  conditions  of  settlement. 
Those  persons  who  settled  the  west  were  used  to  tilling  their 
own  lands,  expected  to  till  them,  and  found  it  for  a  while 
more  profitable  to  till  them.  Those  in  the  east  came  mostly 
from  eastern  Virginia,  where  they  had  learned  the  value  of 
slave  labor  and  started  with  the  idea  that  slaves  they  must 
have.  This  condition  is  well  illustrated  in  a  letter  from 
Governor  Dobbs  in  1755.  He  is  speaking  of  the  people  of 
the  country  and  declares  that  above  all  they  suffer  from  the 
lack  of  pious  clergymen  and  good  schools.  This  occasioned 
idleness,  thriftlessness,  and  ignorance,  "  which,  with  the 
warmth  of  the  climate  and  plenty  they  have  of  cattle  and 
fruit  without  labour,  prevents  their  Industry,  by  which 
Means  the  Price  of  Labour  is  very  high,  and  the  Artificers 
and  Labourers  being  scarce  in  Comparison  to -the  number  of 
Planters,  when  they  are  employed  they  won't  work  half, 

1  Col.  Recs.,  V.,  14411,  145,  and  314.  It  is  likely  that  an  addi- 
tional number  were  brought  in  without  paying  duty.  The  custom- 
houses were  very  loosely  kept. 

2  Ibid.,  IX.,  279. 


193]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  25 

scarce  a  third  part  of  work  in  a  Day  of  what  they  do  in 
Europe,  and  their  wages  being  from  2  Shillings  to  3,  4,  and 
5  Shillings  per  diem  this  Currency,  the  Planters  are  not  able 
to  go  on  with  Improvements  in  building  or  clearing  their 
Lands,  and  unless  they  are  very  industrious  to  lay  up  as 
much  as  can  purchase  2  or  3  Negroes,  they  are  no  ways 
able  to  cultivate  their  Lands  as  Your  Lordships  expect.  .  .  . 
Young  or  new  planters  could  not  venture  to  take  up  Lands, 
and  those  who  are  rich  can't  get  hands  to  assist  them  to 
cultivate,  until  they  can  buy  Slaves  and  teach  them  some 
handicraft  Trades."  1  This  condition  of  affairs  he  declared 
was  still  an  obstacle  to  progress  in  1764.  It  was  a  natural 
outgrowth  of  slavery,  and  it  was  the  price  that  the  South 
always  paid  to  her  "  peculiar  institution."  • 

The  numerical  contrast  in  the  slave  populations  of  the  two 
sections  is  very  great.  In  1767  there  were  in  the  sixteen 
counties  which  we  may  call  eastern,  that  is  to  say  those  that 
were  not  settled  by  people  who  came  the  western  route, 
10,238  white,  as  against  12,307  black,  taxables.  By  the 
method  of  estimating  which  we  have  already  used,  this  would 
be  a  total  population  of  41,000  whites  and  21,500  blacks.  In 
the  thirteen  counties  which  we  may  cidl  western  there  were 
by  the  same  returns  19,448  white,  and  9092  black,  taxables. 
This  would  be  a  total  population  of  about  77,000  whites  and 
about  16,000  blacks.2  The  greatest  excess  of  slaves  over 
white  people  was  in  Brunswick  County,  where  there  were 
224  white,  and  1085  black,  taxables,3  altogether  about  900 
whites  to  about  1800  blacks.  Reverend  John  McDowell, 
in  speaking  of  the  parish  which  made  up  this  county,  said, 
in  1762:  "  We  have  but  few  families  in  this  parish,  but  of  the 
best  in  the  province,  viz.,  His  Excellency  the  Governor,  His 
Honor  the  President,  some  of  the  honorable  Council,  Col. 
Dry,  the  Collector,  and  about  20  other  good  families,  who 
have  each  of  them  great  gangs  of  slaves.     We  have  in  all 

1  Col.  Recs.,  V.,  315,  and  VI.,  1026. 

2Cf.  Col.  Recs.,  VII.,  14s,  288,  539  and  540.     3  Ibid.,  VII.,  539. 


26  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [194 

about  200  families." x  Against  this  eastern  country  it  is  well 
to  place  Rowan  in  the  west.  In  1754  it  had  only  54  black, 
against  11 16  white,  taxables.2  How  many  it  had  in  1767 
does  not  appear,  since  its  black  and  white  taxables  are  not 
distinguished  in  the  returns. 

1  Col.   Recs.,  VI.,  729-730  and  985-986.     Brunswick  was  erected 
into  a  county  in  1764. 

2  Ibid.,  V.,  152. 


195]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  27 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  LEGAL  STATUS  OF  SLAVERY. 

The  first  law  of  North  Carolina,  if  such  it  may  be  called, 
in  regard  to  slavery  was  a  clause  in  the  Fundamental  Con- 
stitutions. It  ran :  "  Every  freeman  of  Carolina  shall  have 
absolute  power  and  authority  over  negro  slaves  of  what 
opinion  and  religion  soever." 1  This  clause  but  expressed 
the  legal  concept  of  the  time  in  regard  to  the  rights  of  the 
American  slave-owners.  It  was  enforced  not  so  much  be- 
cause it  was  a  part  of  the  Fundamental  Constitutions,  as 
because  it  fitted  in  with  what  was  in  the  other  colonies 
already  good  custom.     It  recognized  the  slave  as  a  chattel. 

1  He  could,  according  to  the  popular  theory,  be  bought,  bred, 
worked,  neglected,  marked,  or  treated  in  any  other  respect 

I  as  a  horse  or  a  cow. 

The  earliest  known  law  passed  in  North  Carolina  on  the 
subject  of  slavery  was  included  in  the  Revision  of  1715.2 
This  revision  comprised  as  many  of  the  old  laws  as  were  in 
force  in  171 5.  The  necessity  of  the  case  would  have  de- 
manded a  law  fixing  the  status  of  slaves  and  servants  at 
an  early  date,  and  it  is  probable  that  this  law,  or  its  chief 
features,  was  in  force  at  a  much  earlier  date  than  1715.  It 
was  most  likely  in  force  earlier  than  1699,  since  in  that  year 
we  find  a  law  which  contained  a  provision  in  regard  to  har- 
boring runaways3  similar  to  one  in  the  law  of  171 5. 

1  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  204. 

2  These  laws  are  preserved  in  manuscript  in  the  State  Library, 
Raleigh,  N.  C,  and  the  one  in  question  may  be  found  on  pages 
269-290  of  that  volume.     It  appears  as  chapter  46. 

3  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  514- 


28  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [196 

The  Slave  in  Court. — By  this  law  a  slave  could  not  be 
tried  in  the  same  court  that  was  open  to  a  freeman.  If  he 
had  offended  seriously  he  must  be  tried  before  any  three 
justices  of  the  peace  and  three  additional  freeholders  who  were 
also  slaveholders,  or  the  major  part  of  them,  and  who  lived 
in  the  precinct  in  which  the  offence  was  committed.  The 
tribunal  thus  constituted  was  to  have  power  to  try  the  case 
according  to  its  best  judgment,  to  give  sentence  of  life 
or  member,  or  other  corporal  punishment,  and  to  order  the 
execution  of  the  sentence  by  the  regular  officers  of  the 
law.  It  was  to  meet  at  such  a  time  as  should  be  appointed 
by  that  justice  of  the  peace  whose  name  came  first  in  the 
commission  of  the  peace  for  the  precinct.1  The  reason  for 
this  separate  court,  says  Dr.  Hawks,  was  that  the  slave 
might  be  tried  at  once,  so  that  his  master  might  not  lose 
his  labor  while  waiting  for  the  time  for  the  regular  court  to 
sit2  If  a  slave  should  be  executed  by  order  of  the  court,  or 
if  he  should  be  killed  while  resisting  arrest,  it  was  the  duty 
of  this  court  to  ascertain  his  value  and  to  give  a  certificate 
of  that  valuation  to  the  owner.  This  entitled  the  owner  to 
a  poll-tax  on  all  the  slaves  in  the  government  in  order  to 
reimburse  him  for  his  loss. 

This  act  was  in  force  until  1741,  when  a  new  "  Act  Con- 
cerning Servants  and  Slaves  " 3  was  passed.  The  provisions 
for  the  trial  of  a  slave  were  thereby  slightly  altered.  An 
offending  slave  was  to  be  committed  to  jail  by  any  justice  of 
the  peace  as  soon  as  there  appeared  good  reasons  for 
suspecting  him.  The  sheriff  was  then  to  summon  two 
justices  and  four  freeholders  who  were  slave-owners.  These 
were  to  meet  at  the  county  court-house  to  hear  all  charges 
against  the  slaves.  All  the  justices  of  the  peace  in  the 
county  who  were  slave-owners  might  sit  on  the  bench  if  they 
were  present  at  the  trial,  though  not  all  could  be  summoned. 

1  In  1740  John  Swann  and  John  Davis  were  removed  from  their 
commissions  of  the  peace  in  New  Hanover  County  for  refusing  to 
act  at  the  trial  of  a  negro  (Col.  Recs.,  IV.,  460). 

2  History  of  North  Carolina,  II.,  205. 
8  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  24. 


197]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  29 

This  court  was  given  a  broader  jurisdiction  than  that  pos- 
sessed by  the  older  tribunal.  It  was  directed  to  "  take  for 
evidence  the  confession  of  the  offender,  the  oath  of  one  or 
more  credible  witnesses,  or  such  testimony  of  negroes, 
mulattoes,  or  Indians,  bond  or  free,  with  pregnant  circum- 
stances as  to  them  shall  seem  convincing,  without  solemnity 
of  jury;  and  the  offender  being  then  found  guilty,  to  pass 
such  judgment  upon  the  offender,  according  to  their  dis- 
cretion, as  the  nature  of  the  offence  may  require;  and  on 
such  judgment  to  award  execution."  The  master  of  the 
slave,  or  his  overseer,  could  appear  at  the  trial  in  his  behalf, 
but  in  defending  him  he  was  to  see  "  that  the  defence  do 
not  relate  to  the  formality  in  the  proceeding  of  the  trial " 
(sects.  48-52).  This  law  remained  on  the  statute  book 
throughout  the  colonial  period. 

Lit  was  a  part  of  the  universal  law  of  Southern  slavery  that 
a  slave  should  not  testify  against  a  white  person  in  the  courts. ': 
In  North  Carolina  this  principle  seems  to  have  been  recog- 
nized from  the  first;  for  Tobias  Knight,  when  he  was 
charged  in  171 9  with  complicity  with  Teach,  the  pirate, 
urged  in  his  defence  that  the  prosecution  had  introduced  the 
evidence  of  four  negro  slaves,  "  which  by  the  laws  and  cus- 
tom of  all  America  ought  not  to  be  examined  as  evidence, 
neither  is  there  [sic]  evidence  of  any  validity  against  any 
white  person  soever." 2  This  seems  to  have  been  at  that  time 
a  matter  of  the  unwritten  law  of  the  colony,  rather  than  a 
colonial  enactment.  At  any  rate,  the  first  time  we  encounter 
such  a  provision  in  the  North  Carolina  laws  is  in  1746.2  It 
was  then  declared  that  "  all  negroes,  mulattoes,  bond  and 
free,  to  the  third  generation,  and  Indian  servants  and  slaves, 
shall  be  deemed  to  be  taken  as  persons  incapable  in  law  to  be 
witnesses  in  any  case  whatsoever,  except  against  each  other." 
This  feature  of  the  law  of  evidence  was  renewed  from  time 
to  time  till  the  Revolution,3  and  indeed  it  continued  till  the 
abolition  of  slavery. 

1  Cf.  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  345. 

2  Laws  of  1746  (3d  session),  ch.  2,  sect.  50. 

3  See  Laws  of  1762,  ch.  1;  1768,  ch.  1;  and  1773,  ch.  1. 


30  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [198 

The  denial  of  the  privilege  of  testifying  in  court  has  been 
regarded  as  a  great  hardship  to  the  negro.  Inasmuch  as  it 
affected  the  more  advanced  of  the  slaves  of  the  period  just 
before  the  Civil  War,  this  is  a  just  contention;  but  it  is  well 
to  remember  that  in  the  days  when  slavery  was  introduced 
into  America  there  were  two  good  reasons,  as  the  whites 
thought,  why  the  negroes  should  not  give  evidence  against  a 
white  man.  i.  They  were  in  the  lowest  moral  condition. 
Those  who  have  not  examined  contemporary  testimony  on 
the  subject  will  not  easily  imagine  how  the  negroes  lived. 
They  were  naturally  ignorant,  superstitious,  and  filled  with 
intense  hatred  for  those  who  made  them  slaves  and  held 
them  as  such.  They  were  bestial,  given  to  the  worst  venereal 
diseases  and  they  had  little  or.  no  regard  for  the  marriage 
bond.  Indeed,  as  Brickell  says,  marriage  sat  very  lightly 
on  them.1  They  were  unchaste  and  mostly  unreliable.  2. 
The  Africans  were  pagans.  Those  few  who  professed  con- 
version to  Christianity  could  not  have  had  any  clearly  de- 
fined idea  of  Christian  principles.  The  mass  who  were  un- 
converted could  have  very  little  regard  for  the  Christian 
oath.  How  could  such  persons,  argued  the  colonists,  be 
allowed  to  imperil  the  lives  of  Christian  whites?  That  such 
testimony  should  not  be  received  was  quite  in  keeping  with 
the  spirit  of  the  times. 

Not  satisfied  with  denying  them  the  right  to  testify  against 
the  whites,  the  Assembly,  in  the  law  of  1741  (sect.  50), 
enacted  that  if  any  negro,  mulatto,  or  Indian,  bond  or  free, 
be  found  to  have  testified  falsely,  he  should  without  further 
trial  be  ordered  by  the  court  to  have  one  ear  nailed  to  the 
pillory  and  there  to  stand  one  hour,  at  the  end  of  which 
time  that  ear  should  be  cut  off;  then  the  other  ear  should 
be  nailed  to  the  pillory,  and  at  the  end  of  another  hour  be 
cut  off  as  the  former.  Finally  the  luckless  fellow  received 
thirty-nine  lashes  on  his  bare  back,  well  laid  on.  This,  it 
must  be  confessed,  was  vigorous  enough  to  reach  the  con- 
science even  of  a  pagan.     The  chairman  of  the  court  before 

1  Brickell,  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  274. 


199]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  31 

which  the  slave  was  tried  was,  however,  instructed  to  warn 
the  witnesses  in  the  outset  against  giving  false  testimony, 
unless  indeed  such  witnesses  were  Christians  (sect.  51). 

If  a  slave  should  lose  his  life  while  engaged  in  some  affair 
of  the  colony's  responsibility,  the  master  would  feel  that  he 
should  not  have  to  lose  the  value  of  this  piece  of  property. 
He  might  also  be  disposed  to  impede  the  action  of  the  law. 
To  obviate  this  it  was  provided  that  any  master  who  had  lost 
a  slave  in  dispersing  a  conspiracy,  in  taking  up  runaways,  or 
in  the  execution  of  an  order  of  court,  should  have  a  claim 
against  the  public,  to  be  allowed  by  the  Assembly.  If,  how- 
ever, a  third  party  should  kill  a  man's  slave,  the  owner  would 
have  no  other  recourse  than  an  action  for  damage  to  prop- 
erty.1 In  1758  the  Assembly  decided  to  try  an  experiment. 
They  were  dissatisfied  with  existing  conditions.  Paying  for 
executed  slaves  they  considered  a  hardship,  and  they  thought 
that  they  had  come  upon  a  plan  which  would  save  the 
lives  of  the  slaves  and  still  act  as  a  deterrent  from  further 
crimes.  They  enacted  that  except  for  rape  or  murder  no 
male  slave  who  had  committed  a  crime  which  was  ordinarily 
punished  by  death  should  suffer  death  for  the  first  offence; 
but  that  on  due  conviction  such  an  offender  should  be  cas- 
trated, the  sheriff  to  be  allowed  for  the  operation  twenty 
shillings  to  be  paid  by  the  public.  The  court  must  fix  the 
value  of  the  slave  before  the  execution  of  this  sentence,  so 
that  if  it  should  be  the  cause  of  his  death  there  might  be  no 
dispute  as  to  the  value  to  be  paid  his  master.  Three  pounds 
were  allowed  by  the  public  for  the  curing  of  the  slave's 
wounds.  For  the  second  offence  death  might  be  the  penalty. 
At  the  same  time  it  was  ordered  that  no  owner  should  re- 
cover more  than  sixty  pounds  for  a  slave  executed  or  killed 
in  outlawry.2  This  experiment  to  relieve  the  government 
of  paying  for  executed  negroes  did  not,  it  seems,  prove 
successful.     It  was  put  into  operation  in  at  least  one  instance, 

1  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  21,  sects.  54  and  55. 

2  Laws  of  1758,  ch.  7. 


32  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [200 

in  1762.1  Why  it  was  not  continued  we  do  not  know.  It 
would  be  charitable  to  suppose  that  the  public  mind  revolted 
at  its  disgusting  severity.  At  any  rate,  in  1764  a  law  was 
passed  which  repealed  the  provision  in  regard  to  castration, 
and  raised  to  eighty  pounds  the  limit  at  which  slaves  exe- 
cuted or  killed  in  outlawry  might  be  valued.2  The  next 
attempt  in  this  line  was  a  bill  introduced  in  1771,  which 
provided  that  the  several  counties  should  tax  themselves  to 
pay  for  slaves  executed  within  their  borders.  Such  a  measure 
would  throw  the  expense  on  the  slaveholding  counties,  and 
was  evidently  regarded  as  a  relief  by  counties  that  had  few 
slaves.  It  was  introduced  by  Thomas  Polk,  of  Mecklenberg 
County,  where  there  were  very  few  slaves.  It  passed  the 
lower  house,  but  was  rejected  on  the  second  reading  in  the 
Council.3  The  same  measure  came  up  again  in  the  Assembly 
of  1773,  but  it  met  the  same  fate.4 

Runaways. — One  of  the  commonest  delinquencies  on  the 
part  of  the  slaves  was  running  away.  Used  to  the  forest 
life  in  Africa  and  accustomed  to  much  severity  on  the  farms 
of  the  frontier  planters,  it  was  no  great  hardship  to  them  to 
live  for  months  or  years  in  camp  in  the  swamps.5  It  seems, 
too,  that  there  were  not  wanting  at  that  time  freemen  who 
would  help  the  runaways.  The  law  against  the  practice  was 
very  severe.  The  act  of  171 5,  which  has  already  been  cited 
more  than  once,  provided  that  any  person  who  should  harbor 
a  runaway  slave  more  than  one  night  should  pay  to  the 
owner  of  the  slave  ten  shillings  for  each  twenty-four  hours 
he  had  been  kept  in  excess  of  the  first  night.  He  was  also 
to  pay  to  the  owner  any  damage  the  latter  might  be  adjudged 
to  have  received  by  reason  that  the  former  had  harbored 
the  runaway  (sect.  6).     No  master,  it  was  further  enacted, 

1  Col..  Recs.,  VI.,  742.  2  Laws  of  1764,  ch.  8. 

3  Col.   Recs.,  VIII.,  355,  356,  403,  405  and  409. 

4  Ibid.,   IX.,   404  and  418. 

5  The  Dismal  Swamp  was  a  great  place  for  these  runaways. 
Elkanah  Watson  found  them  there  in  1777,  and  they  seem  to  have 
been  there  much  earlier.  See  Watson's  Journal,  Wake  Forest 
Student,  December,  1895,  p.  85. 


201]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  .      33 

should  allow  a  slave  to  go  off  his  plantation — except  he  be 
in  livery,  or  waited  on  a  master  or  mistress,  or  accompanied  a 
white  servant — unless  he  first  gave  the  said  slave  a  ticket 
stating  the  place  from  which,  and  the  place  to  which,  the 
slave  was  going.  Five  shillings  was  the  penalty  for  violating 
this  feature  of  the  law  (sect.  7).  All  persons  were  com- 
manded to  do  all  they  could  to  arrest  slaves  off  their  master's 
plantations  without  the  proper  tickets,  and  in  fact  to  arrest 
any  suspected  runaways  or  any  slaves  away  from  their  homes 
with  arms  in  their  possession.  A  slave  so  arrested  was  to 
be  taken  before  a  neighboring  magistrate,  who  might,  at  his 
discretion,  order  corporal  punishment.  He  who  arrested 
such  a  slave  was  to  deliver  him  to  the  master,  if  he  were 
known,  otherwise  to  the  provost  marshal  of  the  colony,1  and 
receive  pay  for  his  trouble  from  either  the  one  or  the  other 
,at  a  rate  specified  by  law  (sect.  8). 

A  slave  that  thus  came  into  the  hands  of  the  provost 
marshal  must  be  kept  safely.  If  necessary,  he  was  confined 
and  the  public  paid  for  his  support;  but  if  he  was  not  un- 
manageable, the  provost  marshal  might  work  him  to  pay 
for  his  keep.  A  slave  thus  in  custody  must  be  advertised  by 
proclamation  in  every  precinct  in  the  colony  at  the  next  three 
courts  after  the  date  of  arrest.  The  jails  in  the  colony  were 
at  that  time  notoriously  insecure,  and  provision  was  made 
that  if  the  slave  escaped  from  jail  the  provost  marshal  should 
not  be  held  accountable  unless  it  could  be  shown  that  the 
prison  was  secure,  or  that  the  marshal  had  connived  at,  or 
aided  in,  the  escape.  Any  person  who  should  kill  a  runaway 
slave  "  that  hath  lyen  out  two  months,"  while  trying  to  appre- 
hend him,  was  not  to  be  held  accountable  for  it  if  he  would 
swear  that  he  did  the  killing  in  self-defence  (sect.  8). 

Any  one  who  will  examine  the  laws  passed  from  time 
to  time   on  any   one   feature   of   slavery  will   be   able    to 

1  The  provost  marshal  was  the  high  sheriff  of  the  county.  In  each 
precinct  there  was  a  deputy  marshal.  When  the  precincts  were 
changed  into  counties  the  latter  officers  were  thenceforth  called 
sheriffs. 


34  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [202 

understand  with  ease  the  whole  progress  of  the  public 
mind  in  the  South  in  reference  to  the  slaves.  The  whites 
started  with  the  idea  that  the  negroes  must  be  kept  from 
rebelling.  They  erected  certain  restraints  on  actions  which 
looked  like  rebellion,  or  which  might  possibly  lead  to  it. 
As  time  went  on  the  negroes  learned  how  to  evade  these  re- 
straints or  to  find  new  lines,  which  it  was  feared  would  lead 
to  liberty.  As  these  avenues  were  seen,  new  laws  were  passed 
which  closed  them  to  the  unfortunate  blacks.  It  was  not 
the  harshness  of  the  dispositions  of  the  whites,  but  the  inevi- 
table logic  of  their  first  attitude  on  the  matter  that  made 
them  draw  cord  after  cord  around  the  black  man  to  make 
his  bondage  secure.1 

In  nothing  is  this  process  seen  more  clearly  than  in  the 
law  in  reference  to  runaways.  The  slaves  found  means  of 
evading  the  law  of  171 5  in  regard  to  certain  minor  points. 
The  law  of  1741  re-enacted  the  law  of  1715  and  added  pro- 
visions to  cut  off  these  avenues  of  evasion.  It  was  enacted 
that  the  person  who  tempted  a  slave  to  run  away  should  be 
fined,  and  the  fine  for  harboring  a  runaway  was  increased. 
If  the  person  so  fined  could  not  pay,  or  did  not  pay,  the  fine, 
he  was  to  be  sold  by  the  court  for  such  time  as  was  necessary 
to  get  money  enough  to  pay  it  (sect.  25).  This  provision 
referred  undoubtedly  to  freemen,  and  the  inference  is  that  it 
aimed  at  the  free  negroes  and  poor  whites,  most  of  whom 
had  once  been  bonded  people  themselves.  That  they  should 
have  tried  to  screen  the  fugitive  negroes  is  not  unlikely. 
Any  one  charged  with  attempting  to  steal  a  slave  and  to 
take  him  out  of  the  province  was  to  be  bound  over  to  court 
on  the  oath  of  one  reputable  witness,  and  if  he  was  lawfully 
convicted  he  should  pay  the  owner  the  sum  of  twenty-five 
pounds.  If  unable  to  pay  this  amount  he  was  to  restore  the 
stolen  slave  and  to  serve  the  owner  five  years.     If,  however, 

1  Brickell,  who  wrote  with  an  eye  to  attract  immigrants,  said  that 
the  planters  continually  put  into  force  all  laws  against  the  slaves  "  to 
prevent  all  opportunity  they  might  lay  hold  of  to  make  themselves 
formidable  "  (Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  276). 


203]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  35 

he  had  already  sent  the  slave  out  of  the  colony  he  was  to 
be  considered  guilty  of  felony,  and  might  accordingly  be 
condemned  to  lose  his  lands,  and  also  his  life  (sect.  27).  To 
insure  that  he  who  took  up  runaways  should  be  paid  for 
his  services,  it  was  ordered  that  if  a  slave  were  taken  ten 
miles  from  his  master's  plantation  the  churchwardens  should 
pay  the  cost  of  taking  him  up  and  then  collect  the  amount 
from  the  owner  (sect.  28).  If  a  runaway  could  not  speak 
English,  or  refused  to  give  his  master's  name,  the  sheriff 
was  to  advertise  him  for  two  months  at  the  court-house  door, 
and  at  each  church  in  the  county,  or  at  any  other  convenient 
places  (sect.  29).  If  at  the  end  of  a  month  the  owner  was 
still  unknown,  the  sheriff1  was  to  deliver  the  slave  to  the  next 
constable,  and  he  in  turn  to  the  next,  and  so  the  luckless 
captive  was  passed  from  constable  to  constable  till  he  came  at 
last  to  the  central  jail  of  the  province  (sect.  30).  The  cost  of 
all  this  was  to  be  paid  by  the  owner  if  he  ever  appeared, 
otherwise  the  slave  was  to  be  hired  out  to  some  person 
approved  by  the  county  court  or  by  two  justices  of  the  peace 
(sects.  31  and  32).  To  distinguish  such  a  slave  from  others, 
as  well  as  to  mark  him  so  that  he  would  not  care  to  run 
away,  there  was  placed  around  his  neck  an  iron  collar  on 
which  were  the  letters  P.  G.,  meaning,  presumably,  "  Public 
Gaol "  (sect.  33). 

Lest  all  this  should  delay  punishment  so  long  that  the 
slave  would  not  be  properly  impressed,  the  justice  of  the 
peace  before  whom  he  was  first  taken  was  to  whip  him 
as  he  thought  best,  not  to  exceed  thirty-nine  lashes  (sect.  34). 
To  get  the  slave  to  the  central  jail  was  not  an  easy  matter; 
constables  gave  various  excuses.  To  facilitate  their  journey- 
ing, the  keepers  of  ferries  were  ordered  to  give  immediate 
passage  to  constables  thus  engaged;  and  the  church- 
wardens were  directed  to  pay  the  ferriage  and  to  collect  the 
same  as  the  other  costs  (sect.  37).     Runaways  that  were 

1  At  this  time  the  older  precincts  had  been  changed  into  counties, 
and  the  provost  marshal,  with  his  deputies,  had  given  place  to  a 
sheriff  for  each  county. 


36  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [204 

thought  to  belong  to  another  colony  must  be  advertised  in 
the  Virginia  and  the  South  Carolina  Gazettes  (sect.  39). 
When  slaves  had  gone  away  to  the  swamps,  and  were  issuing 
thence  to  destroy  hogs  and  other  stock,  there  was  nothing 
to  be  done  with  them  but  to  make  them  outlaws.  The  law 
of  1741  did  just  that.  It  directed  that  in  such  cases  two 
neighboring  justices  of  the  peace  should  issue  a  proclama- 
tion calling  on  such  slaves  to  return  to  their  masters.  If 
they  did  not  return  at  once,  any  person  meeting  them  might 
lawfully  kill  them,  "without  accusation  of  any  crime  for 
the  same  " ;  and  for  the  slaves  so  killed  the  masters  should 
be  repaid  by  the  public  (sects.  45  and  46).  When  runaways 
were  taken  it  was  the  custom  to  put  yokes  around  their 
necks,  and  these  they  were  forced  to  wear  until  "  they  gave 
sufficient  testimony  of  their  good  behaviour  to  the  contrary." * 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Hunt. — Severe  restrictions  were  put 
on  the  slave  in  regard  to  his  right  to  hunt.  Hunting  was 
the  gentleman's  pastime,  and  it  may  be  that  the  idea  that  it 
was  not  becoming  to  allow  slaves  to  engage  in  it  had  some- 
thing to  do  with  the  passing  of  these  laws.  Still  it  cannot 
be  doubted  that  the  chief  reason  was  the  desire  to  keep  arms 
out  of  the  hands  of  the  negroes.  In  this,  as  in  so  many 
other  features  of  these  laws,  the  whites  were  looking  to  the 
possibility  of  an  insurrection.  Carrying  a  gun  also  gave  the 
slave  an  opportunity  to  kill  hogs  or  other  stock  in  the  woods, 
and  this  it  was  desired  to  prevent. 

The  first  law  on  this  subject  was  made  in  1729.2  In  that 
year  the  Assembly,  while  passing  an  act  "  For  Preventing 
People  from  driving  Horses,  Cattle,  or  Hogs,  to  other  Per- 
sons' Lands,"  and  for  other  purposes,  Incorporated  a  clause 
which  forbade  a  slave  to  hunt  with  dog,  or  gun,  or  any  other 
weapon,  on  any  land  but  his  master's,  except  in  company 
with  a  white  man.  The  penalty  for  this  offence  was  fixed  at 
twenty  shillings,  to  be  paid  by  the  master  of  the  slave  to  the 
owner  of  the  land  on  which  the  slave  had  been  found  hunt- 

1  Brickell,  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  270. 

2  Laws  of  1729,  ch.  5,  sect.  7. 


205]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  37 

ing.  The  manner  in  which  this  clause  was  introduced  in- 
dicates that  it  was  passed  chiefly  to  protect  the  stock.  The 
law  of  1741  took  up  this  subject  also.  It  provided  that 
any  one  who  found  an  armed  slave  hunting  or  ranging  in 
the  woods  without  the  written  permission  of  his  master 
should  take  him  before  the  nearest  constable,  who,  without 
further  process,  should  give  the  said  slave  twenty  lashes 
and  then  send  him  to  his  master.  The  master  should  pay 
the  apprehender  for  his  trouble  (sect.  40).  This  clause,  it 
was  seen,  might  bear  severely  on  the  man  who  relied  on 
game  for  an  article  of  diet.  It  was  accordingly  added  that 
this  law  should  not  prevent  a  man  from  keeping  one  slave  on 
each  of  his  plantations  to  take  game  for  his  family's  use  and 
to  drive  away  such  animals  as  were  destroying  stock.  Any 
slave  who  was  thus  set  apart  as  his  master's  hunter  must 
carry  with  him  a  certificate  signed  by  his  master,  and  counter- 
signed by  the  chairman  of  the  county  court,  stating  that  he 
had  the  right  to  carry  a  gun.  If  he  were  caught  without 
this  certificate  he  was  whipped  (sects.  41  and  42). 

These  were,  without  question,  harsh  laws,  and  they  stood 
for  a  severe  spirit  of  repression  on  the  part  of  the  dominant 
Assemblymen.  Their  very  severity  seems  to  have  partly  de- 
feated them.  It  is  pleasant  to  know  that  the  spirit  of  the 
law  was  here  harsher  than  the  practice  of  the  people.  This 
we  know  from  the  preamble  of  an  act  passed  in  1753.1 
Among  other  things  it  declared  that  "  the  remedy  in  the  said 
act  [the  law  of  1741]  provided  has  proved  ineffectual  to 
restrain  many  slaves  in  divers  parts  of  this  province  from 
going  armed,  which  may  prove  of  dangerous  consequences." 
The  truth  about  the  matter  is  most  likely  that  the  good 
nature  of  the  whites  revolted  at  the  harshness  of  the  law 
when  they  were  called  on  to  apply  it  in  individual  cases,  and 
that  as  a  result  many  negroes  who  were  known  to  be  trust- 
worthy carried  guns  and  were  not  apprehended.  The 
Assembly,  looking  at  the  affair  from  the  standpoint  of  theory, 
took  no  such  view.     They  now  passed  a  law  in  which  the 

1  Laws  of  1753,  ch.  6. 


38  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [206 

master's  responsibility  was  taken  into  account.  It  enacted 
that  no  slave  should  hunt  in  the  woods  with  a  gun  unless 
his  master  would  give  bond  for  his  good  behavior;  and  that 
if  any  one  should  suffer  an  injury  at  the  hands  of  such  a 
slave  he  could  recover  the  amount  of  the  damage  from  the 
master's  bondsmen  (sect.  2).  No  slave  should  carry  a  gun 
on  a  plantation  on  which  no  crop  was  planted,  and  only  one 
should  carry  a  gun  on  a  cultivated  plantation;  "and  the 
master,  mistress,  or  overseer  of  any  slave  with  whom  shall 
be  found  any  gun,  sword,  or  other  weapon  contrary  to  the 
true  intent  and  meaning  of  this  and  the  before-recited  act, 
shall  forfeit  and  pay  to  the  person  finding  the  same  the  sum 
of  twenty  shillings  proclamation  money,  .  .  .  any  punish- 
ment inflicted  on  the  slave,  forfeiture  of  the  gun,  sword,  or 
other  weapon  notwithstanding;  unless  such  master,  mistress, 
or  overseer  shall  by  oath  or  other  proof  make  appear  that 
such  a  slave  carrying  a  gun,  sword,  or  other  weapon  was 
without  their  consent  or  knowledge  "  (sect.  3).  In  this  way 
a  master  was  held  to  a  stricter  account,  and  through  him  the 
slaves  were  probably  better  kept  in  hand. 

It  was  also  thought  that  the  slaves  should  be  watched 
more  closely  by  the  civil  authority.  To  that  end  the  courts, 
if  they  saw  fit,  were  directed  to  divide  the  counties  into  dis- 
tricts and  to  appoint  three  searchers  in  each  district.  Four 
times  a  year,  or  oftener,  these  should  search  as  privately 
as  possible  the  quarters  and  places  of  resort  of  the  slaves  to 
find  guns  or  other  weapons.  Any  arms  thus  found  they 
were  to  seize  and  have  for  their  own  use  (sects.  4  and  7). 
This,  it  seems,  was  the  first  appearance  in  the  State  of  the 
patrole,  an  institution  which  the  slave  eventually  learned  to 
dread  perhaps  next  to  the  bloodhounds.  It  was  also  pro- 
vided that  a  slave  with  no  certificate  from  his  master  could 
not  hunt  with  a  dog,  and  any  one  who  caught  him  violating 
this  clause  might  kill  the  dog  and  have  the  slave  whipped  by 
the  nearest  magistrate,  not  exceeding  thirty  lashes  (sect.  8). 

An  abuse  by  both  whites  and  blacks  was  hunting  at  night 
with  guns.     Those  who  were  so  disposed  might  by  that  means 


207]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  39 

easily  kiU  a  hog"  or  a  cow  and  claim  that  it  was  an  accident. 
To  guard  against  this  the  Assembly  in  1766  placed  a  fine 
of  five  pounds  on  any  person  hunting  for  deer  at  night.1  This 
law  was  renewed  in  1770,2  and  in  1773  it  was  amended  so 
as  to  include  slaves.  It  was  then  declared  that  if  any  slave 
were  found  hunting  with  a  gun  at  night  by  firelight  he 
should  be  arrested  by  the  person  so  finding  him,  forfeit  his 
gun  to  that  person,  and  be  carried  to  any  justice  of  the  peace 
of  the  county,  who,  on  conviction,  should  give  him  "  fifty 
lashes  on  his  bare  back,  well  laid  on."3  It  was  unlawful 
for  any  person  to  kill  deer  from  January  15  to  July  15.  A 
law  of  1 738'  declared  that  if  within  this  time  a  slave  should 
kill  a  deer  by  his  master's  commands,  the  master  must  pay 
a  fine  of  five  pounds.  If  he  should  "  kill,  destroy  or  buy  " 
any  deer  during  this  time  without  his  master's  commands  he 
should,  on  conviction  before  a  justice  of  the  peace,  receive 
on  his  "bare  back  thirty  lashes,  well  laid  on";  unless  some 
responsible  person  would  become  bound  to  pay  five  pounds 
in  lieu  of  the  whipping. 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Travel. — The  keeping  down  of  the 
slaves  involved  a  strict  prohibition  on  any  assembling  or 
communicating  at  night  with  one  another.  In  1729  the 
matter  was  taken  up  by  the  lawmakers.0  They  then  enacted 
that  negroes  traveling  at  night,  or  found  at  night  in  the 
kitchens  of  white  people,  should  be  thrashed,  not  to  exceed 
forty  lashes;  and  that  the  negroes  in  whose  company  they 
were  found  should  each  receive  twenty  lashes  (sect.  8).  No 
slave  should  at  any  time  "  travel  from  his  master's  land  by 
himself  to  any  other  place,  unless  he  should  keep  to  the  usual 
and  most  accustomed  road,"  on  penalty  of  receiving  not 
more  than  forty  lashes  from  him  on  whose  land  he  might  be 
found.  "  If  any  loose,  disorderly,  or  suspected  persons  be 
found  drinking,  eating  or  keeping  company  with  a  slave  in 
the  night  time  "  they  should  be  arrested  and  made  to  give 

1  Laws  of  1766,  ch.  18.  *  Laws  of  1770,  ch.  10. 

8  Laws  of  1773,  ch.  18,  sect.  3.  4  Laws  of  1738,  ch.  10. 

5  Laws  of  1729,  ch.  5. 


40  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [208 

satisfactory  account  of  themselves,  or  be  whipped  mot  more 
than  forty  lashes  (sect.  7).  This,  however,  was  not  to  be 
construed  to  prevent  a  master  from  sending  his  negroes  on 
business  with  a  pass,  or  to  obstruct  the  intermarrying  of  the 
slaves  of  neighboring  plantations  when  they  had  received 
permission  from  their  masters  (sect.  9).  This  law  remained 
in  force  until  after  the  Revolution.  So  much  did  the  white 
people  fear  that  the  negroes  would  plot  insurrection  if  they 
could  meet,  that  they  forbade,  as  will  be  seen  later  on,  the 
meeting  of  the  slaves  for  religious  purpose. 

The  Slave's  Right  to  Property. — It  probably  occurred  quite 
early  to  the  owners  of  slaves  to  ask  themselves  what 
property  a  slave  could  own.  If  he  were  a  chattel,  a  thing, 
how  could  he  have  a  dominant  relation  over  another  thing? 
How  the  men  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries 
in  North  Carolina  answered  this  question  we  do  not  definitely 
know.  We  do  know  that  at  first  they  were  lenient  with  their 
slaves  on  this  subject.  They  allowed  them  to  have  cattle, 
and  probably  to  cultivate  small  plots  of  ground  for  their 
own  use.  Later  in  this  period  they  became  more  stringent 
and  took  away  the  right  of  holding  cattle.  The  cause  of  this 
does  not  seem  to  have  been  any  intention  to  carry  to  its 
logical  sequence  their  idea  of  a  slave's  legal  status.  It  arose 
rather  from  the  thievishness  of  the  negroes.  Having  stock 
of  their  own,  it  was  easy  for  them  to  steal  that  of  other 
people,  to  change  the  marks  so  as  to  make  them  conform 
with  their  own  marks,  and  thus  baffle  punishment.  This 
seems  to  have  led  to  the  several  laws  which  gradually  re- 
strained the  slave's  right  of  owning  property  until  it  was 
finally  extinguished  altogether. 

The  first  provision  of  this  nature  is  found  in  the  law  of 
1 71 5.  It  restrained  the  slave's  right  to  buy  and  sell,  or  even 
to  borrow.  It  provided  that  whoever  should  sell  or  lend 
to  a  slave  without  the  consent  of  the  slave's  master  should 
forfeit  treble  the  value  of  the  amount  of  the  trade  or  loan  and 
be  subject,  in  addition,  to  a  fine  of  ten  pounds,  to  be  recov- 
ered by  the  master.     That  this  was  considered  more  a  matter 


209]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  41 

of  public  safety  than  an  act  of  justice  to  the  master  is  shown 
by  a  further  provision.  If  the  master  did  not  sue  within  six 
months  after  he  knew  of  the  transaction,  anybody  else  might 
bring  suit  and  recover  the  fine  (sect.  9).  The  law  of  1741 
modified  this  by  reducing  the  fine  from  ten  to  six  pounds, 
and  by  providing  that  if  the  offender  could  not  pay  the  fine 
he  should  be  sold  by  the  county  court  for  a  term  sufficient 
to  pay  it.1  This  feature  of  the  law  was  further  amended  in 
1773  by  an  act  that  forbade  keepers  of  ordinaries  to  sell 
liquors  to  slaves  against  the  will  of  their  masters.2 

In  1741  the  Assembly  took  up  the  matter  of  the  stealing 
of  stock  by  slaves.  Thievish  by  nature,  the  African  in 
America  became  especially  expert  in  petty  larcenies.  He 
was  the  more  impelled  to  it  because  he  felt  that  he  had 
worked  to  raise  the  stock  and  ought  to  have  a  full  share. 
At  the  time  of  which  we  are  now  speaking  it  was  enacted3 
that  if  any  negro,  Indian,  or  mulatto  slave  should  kill  any 
horse,  cattle,  or  hogs  without  the  owner's  consent,  or  should 
steal,  misbrand  or  mismark  any  horse,  cattle,  or  hogs,  he 
should  have  his  ears  cut  off  and  be  publicly  whipped,  at 
the  discretion  of  the  court  trying  the  offence.  For  the  second 
offence  he  should  suffer  death  (sect.  10).  The  law  of  the 
same  year,  which  we  have  already  quoted  so  often,  was  more 
severe  still.  It  provided  that  no  slave  should  on  any  pre- 
text raise  hogs,  horses,  or  cattle,  and  that  all  such  stock 
as  was  found  in  the  possession  of  slaves  six  months  after 
the  passage  of  this  act  was  to  be  seized  and  sold  by  the 
churchwardens,  one-half  to  go  to  the  informer  and  the  other 
half  to  go  to  the  parish.  This  rigorous  provision  remained 
the  law  of  the  land  from  that  time  throughout  the  period 
which  we  have  under  consideration  (sect.  44). 

The  slaves  for  their  part  seem  to  have  been  accustomed 
to  allege  that  they  stole  because  they  were  not  properly  fed. 
In  some  cases  this  was  doubtless  a  true  allegation.  At  least 
the  Assembly  seem  to  have  thought  as  much;  for  in  1753 

1  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  24,  sect.  14. 

2  Laws  of  1773,  ch.  8,  sect.  9.  3  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  8. 


42  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [210 

they  enacted  that  no  man  who  had  a  slave  killed  in  outlawry 
or  executed  by  the  order  of  a  court  could  recover  his  value 
from  the  public  unless  he  could  make  it  appear  that  the  said 
slave  had  been  properly  clothed,  and  for  the  preceding  year 
had  constantly  received  an  allowance  of  one  quart  of  corn 
a  day  (sect  9).  This  was  an  insufficient  ration,  and  an  in- 
sufficient means  of  enforcing  it  was  provided.  To  direct  that 
the  getting  of  it  should  depend  on  the  liability  of  the  slave 
to  be  executed  or  to  become  an  outlaw  was  but  a  slight 
approach  to  justice.  There  ought  at  least  to  have  been  a 
plainly  expressed  injunction  that  this  minimum  ration  should 
be  given  to  each  slave  on  pain  of  proper  penalties.  The 
same  law  further  provided  that  if  a  slave  who  was  not  prop- 
erly clothed  and  fed  should  be  convicted  of  stealing  from 
any  man  other  than  his  master,  the  wronged  man  might 
recover  damages  from  the  owner  of  the  thief.  If  we  may 
believe  Brickell,  clothing  of  slaves  was  not  an  item  of  great 
expense  to  the  masters.  He  says  that  children  wore  little  or 
no  clothing  in  the  summer,  and  that  many  young  men  and 
young  women  worked  in  the  fields  naked  but  for  cloths 
around  their  loins.1 

^The  Slave's  Right  to  Life. — The  King  seems  to  have  been 
more  inclined  to  compassion  towards  the  slaves  than  the 
Lords  Proprietors.  The  latter  in  their  Fundamental  Consti- 
tutions had  given  the  settlers  absolute  control  over  their 
negro  slaves.  So  far  as  we  know,  this  remained  their  atti- 
tude toward  slavery  as  long  as  they  held  the  colony.  Bur- 
rington,  the  first  royal  governor,  however,  was  instructed  to 
endeavor  to  get  a  law  passed  "  for  the  restraining  of  any 
inhuman  severity  which  by  ill  masters  or  their  overseers  may 
be  used  towards  their  Christian  servants  and  their  slaves,  and 
that  provision  be  made  therein  that  the  wilful  killing  of 
Indians  and  negroes  may  be  punished  with  death,  and  that 
a  fit  penalty  be  imposed  for  the  maiming  of  them."2  The 
same  instruction  was  given  to  Governor  Dobbs  in  I754-3 

1  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  276. 

2  Col.  Recs.,  III.,  p.  106.  3  Ibid.,  V.,   1122. 


211]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  43 

He  duly  recommended  it  to  the  Assembly,1  and  a  bill  to  that 
end  was  introduced.  It  passed  three  readings  in  the  lower 
house,  but  was  rejected  on  the  third  reading  in  the  Council.2 
In  1773  William  Hooper  presented  a  bill  to  prevent  the 
malicious  killing  of  slaves.  It  passed  both  houses,  but  was 
rejected  by  the  Governor,  because  "  it  was  inconsistent  with 
His  Majesty's  instructions  to  pass  it,  as  it  does  not  reserve 
the  fines  imposed  by  it  pursuant  to  their  direction."3  The 
matter  was  taken  up  again  in  the  next  Assembly,  and  an 
Act  to  Prevent  the  Wilful  and  Malicious  Killing  of  Slaves 
was  successfully  passed.  It  was  the  last  law  but  one  that 
was  signed  by  the  royal  governor  of  North  Carolina.4 

Two  of  the  sections  of  this  act  are  so  full  of  meaning  that 
it  is  well  to  give  them  in  full.     They  are : 

"  I.  Whereas  some  doubts  have  arisen  with  respect  to  the 
punishment  proper  to  be  inflicted  upon  such  as  have  been 
guilty  of  wilfully  and  maliciously  killing  slaves : 

"  II.  Be  it  therefore  enacted  by  the  Governor,  Council  and 
Assembly,  and  by  the  authority  of  the  same,  That  from  and 
after  the  first  day  of  May  next  if  any  person  shall  be  guilty 
of  wilfully  and  maliciously  killing  a  slave,  so  that  if  he  had 
in  the  same  manner  killed  a  freeman  he  would  by  the  laws 
of  the  realm  be  held  and  deemed  guilty  of  murder,  that  then 
and  in  that  case  such  an  offender  shall,  upon  due  and  legal 
conviction  thereof  in  the  Superior  Court  of  the  district  where 
such  offence  shall  happen  or  have  been  committed,  suffer 
twelve  months  imprisonment;  and  upon  a  second  conviction 
thereof  shall  be  adjudged  guilty  of  murder,  and  shall  suffer 
death  without  benefit  of  clergy." 

It  was  also  provided  that  if  the  slave  that  should  be  killed 
in  this  manner  be  not  the  property  of  the  offender,  the  slayer 
shall  pay  to  the  owner  the  value  of  the  slave,  to  be  assessed 
by  the  Inferior  Court  of  the  county;  provided,  however,  that 
this  act  should  not  extend  to  those  who  killed  outlaws,  or  to 

1  Col.  Recs.,   V.,  660.  =  Ibid.,  V.,  666  and  676. 

s  Ibid.,  IX.,  398,  470,  663  and  664. 
4  Laws  of  1774,  ch.  31. 


44  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [212 

slaves  who  died  under  moderate  correction,  or  to  those  who 
were  killed  while  resisting  their  lawful  masters.  If  this  was 
all  the  relief  that  could  now  be  granted  to  the  slave,  what 
must  have  been  his  rights  in  regard  to  his  own  life  before 
this  law  was  passed!  It  is  impossible  to  fail  to  see  that  the 
last  proviso,  in  that  it  gave  a  man  the  opportunity  to  allege 
that  the  killing  had  been  done  while  the  slave  was  resisting 
authority,  or  in  process  of  moderate  correction,  went  far  to- 
ward annulling  the  whole  law. 


213]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  45 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE    RELIGIOUS    AND    SOCIAL    LIFE    OF    THE    SLAVES. 

Religion. — There  is  no  part  of  our  subject  on  which  we 
have  more  unsatisfactory  records  than  on  this.  The  earliest 
slaves  in  the  colony,  except  in  rare  cases,  were  undoubtedly 
pagans.  The  people  seem  to  have  been  content  that  they 
should  have  remained  such.  Indeed,  if  we  may  believe  much 
contemporary  evidence  that  has  come  down  to  us,  the  whites 
did  not  care  very  much  if  they  themselves  were  pagans.  In 
view  of  such  circumstances  it  is  not  surprising  that  we  are 
compelled  to  pass  over  as  much  of  the  seventeenth  century  as 
falls  within  our  sphere  of  inquiry  with  but  little  comment 
on  the  slave's  religious  life. 

Besides  the  indifference  to  religion  on  the  part  of  the 
I  whites,  there  was  another  cause  of  the  failure  to  convert  the 
slaves.  At  first  all  the  American  colonists  who  had  slaves  had 
the  notion  that  it  was  illegal  to  hold  a  Christian  in  bondage. 
The  right  to  enslave  a  negro  seems  to  have  been  based  on 
the  fact  that  he  was  a  pagan.  If  such  were  the  case,  would 
not  conversion  enfranchise  him?  It  was  a  matter  of  doubt 
in  the  minds  of  the  planters,  and  since  it  was  such  they 
hesitated  to  allow  their  negroes  to  become  converted.1  It 
was  in  view  of  this  feeling  that  the  Lords  Proprietors  de- 
clared in  the  Fundamental  Constitutions:  "Since  charity 
obliges  us  to  wish  well  to  the  souls  of  all  men,  and  religion 
ought  to  alter  nothing  in  any  man's  civil  estate  or  right,  it 
shall  be  lawful  for  slaves  as  well  as  for  others  to  enter  them- 

1  Maryland  in  1671  passed  the  law  stating  that  conversion  or  bap- 
tism should  not  be  taken  to  give  freedom  to  slaves.  In  1677  an 
English  court  gave  an  opinion  that  converted  slaves  were  "  in- 
franchised."     See  Brackett,  The  Negro  in  Maryland,  28,  29. 


46  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [214 

selves  and  to  be  of  what  church  or  profession  any  of  them 
shall  think  best,  and  thereof  be  as  fully  members  as  any 
freeman.  But  yet  no  slave  shall  hereby  be  exempted  from 
that  civil  dominion  his  master  hath  over  him,  but  be  in  all 
things  in  the  same  state  and  condition  he  was  in  before."1 
So  important  did  they  consider  this  feature  that  when  they  re- 
vised and  abridged  their  constitutions  in  1698  they  kept  it 
intact.2  These  Constitutions  as  a  whole  were  never  recog- 
nized as  of  binding  force  in  North  Carolina,3  yet  the  people 
did  not  hesitate  afterwards  to  claim  ito  guarantees  in  points 
which  were  in  their  favor.4  This  guarantee  might  have  been 
successfully  used  to  protect  the  planters  should  a  case  have 
arisen  over  the  point  in  question,  and  yet  it  left  the  matter 
with  an  element  of  risk  in  it  that  made  the  planters  unwilling 
to  allow  the  conversion  of  the  negroes. 

The  condition  that  followed  these  circumstances  is  well 
seen  from  a  statement  of  James  Adams,  a  clergyman  of  the 
Established  Church  who  was  in  the  colony  in  1709.  He 
complained  because  the  masters  would  "  by  no  means  permit 
[their  slaves]  to  be  baptized,  having  a  false  notion  that  a 
Christian  slave  is  by  law  free."  A  few  of  the  negroes,  he 
said,  were  instructed  in  the  principles  of  religion,  but  he 
says  plainly  that  they  were  not  baptized.6  The  mis- 
sionaries of  the  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gospel 
in  Foreign  Parts  preached  vigorously  against  this  notion. 
Giles  Rainsford,  one  of  these  missionaries,  writing  from 
Chowan  in  1712,  tells  how  he  had  had  much  trouble  to  induce 
one  Martin  to  allow  three  slaves  to  be  baptized.6     Four  years 

1  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  204. 

2  Ibid.,  II.,  857. 

8  See  the  author's  "  Constitutional  Beginnings  of  North  Carolina," 
Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies,  Series  XII.,  pp.  137,  138. 

4  Col.  Recs.,  III.,  452. 

5  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  720. 

8  Ibid.,  I.,  858.  In  1715  this  same  man  writes:  "I  have  baptized 
upwards  of  forty  negroes  in  this  and  the  neighboring  government 
in  the  compass  of  this  past  year  ";  but  there  is  no  means  of  knowing 
how  many  of  these  were  in  North  Carolina  and  how  many  were  in 
Virginia  (ibid.,  II.,  153). 


215]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  47 

later  Mr.  Taylor,  mother  missionary,  reported  that  he  had 
baptized  five  slaves  belonging  to  Mr.  Duckinfield.  He  had 
also  been  preparing  several  others  for  baptism,  but  the  oppo- 
nents of  the  baptism  of  slaves  had  talked  so  much  to  the 
owner  about  it  that  he  had  declared  that  no  more  should  be 
baptized  until  the  British  Parliament  should  pass  a  law  pro- 
viding that  slaves  should  not  obtain  their  freedom  by  bap- 
tism.1    This  was  in  Perquimons. 

It  is  by  no  means  a  compliment  to  the  North  Carolinians 
of  that  day  that  this  condition  was  improved  so  slowly.  The 
lack  of  any  efficient  system  of  schools  and  of  any  even 
tolerable  supply  of  ministers2  left  the  intellectual  and  moral 
status  very  unpromising.  That  little  progress  should  have 
come  out  of  these  conditions  is  but  natural.  From  171 5 
until  1735  we  get  only  occasional  information  in  the  letters 
of  the  few  missionaries  in  the  colony.  From  these  we  see 
the  total  number  of  persons  that  were  baptized.  The  pro- 
portion that  were  slaves  is  very  small,  but  from  1735  it  be- 
gins to  grow  slowly.  In  that  year  Mr.  Marsden  reports  that 
during  his  stay  at  Cape  Fear  he  has  baptized  "  about  1300 
men,  women  and  children,  besides  some  negro  slaves."  s  In 
1742  another  missionary  writes  that  in  New  Hanover 
County,  where  there  were  1000  whites  and  2000  slaves,  he 
had  baptized  307  of  the  former  and  9  of  the  latter.4  From 
this  time  information  is  abundant.  A  continued  comparison 
of  the  reports  shows  a  steady  increase  in  the  baptized  slaves.5 
The  improvement  in  the  social  conditions  that  came  with  a 
denser  settlement  and  a  wealthier  community  made  for  the 
advantage  of  the  slave.  The  reports  of  the  colonial  clergy 
now  show  proportions  something  like  the  following:  In  a 
parish  where  there  were  very  many  slaves,  124  white  and  40 

1  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  332-333- 

2  Governor  Everhard  said  in  1726  that  there  was  not  a  clergyman 
in  the  province  (ibid.,  III.,  48);  and  in  1735  there  were  only  three 
(ibid.,  IV.,  p.  7). 

3  Ibid.,   IV.,    13-14-  4Ibid.,    IV,   605. 
5Cf.   ibid.,  IV.,  793,  794,  795,  925,   1315;  VI.,  225,  233,  265,  315, 

711,  729,  735- 


48  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [216 

black  infants  are  reported  as  baptized  in  1765;1  in  another 
parish  it  is  124  whites  and  46  blacks;2  hi  still  another,  331 
white  and  51  black  children  are  baptized  in  sixteen  months.3 
The  same  man  reports  in  1771  that  from  *he  preceding  seven- 
teen months  he  had  baptized  383  white  and  65  black  children.4 
Another  clergyman,  Mr.  Taylor,  writes  a  year  later  that 
during  the  past  thirteen  months  he  had  baptized  in  his  own 
parish  174  whites  and  168  blacks;  93  of  the  latter  and  only  2 
of  the  former  were  adults.  He  adds  that  the  slaves  "  seem  to 
be  very  desirous  of  instruction  in  their  duty."  This  was  in 
Northampton  County.  When  he  went  into  Edgecombe 
County  on  a  preaching  tour,  there  being  no  minister  there 
at  that  time,  he  did  not  have  such  success.  He  baptized  in 
three  days  129  white  and  4  black  infants.6  There  was  at 
this  time  no  opposition  on  the  part  of  the  masters  to  the 
christianization  of  the  blacks,  and  it  is  likely  that  the  number 
of  them  in  any  one  parish  who  were  converted  was  due 
chiefly  to  the  clergyman  there.  It  does  not  appear  that  all 
the  clergymen  were  so  much  interested  in  the  slaves  as  Mr. 
Taylor.  If  we  remember  that  in  this  period  there  were 
very  few  clergymen  in  the  province,6  and  that  there  were 
many  slaves  in  the  parish  whose  masters  were  Dissenters, 
and  consequently  had  nothing  to  do  with  a  minister  of  the 
Established  Church,  we  shall  see  that  after  all  the  number 
of  slaves  reached  by  these  clergymen  was  relatively  small. 

The  method  of  instructing  slaves  in  religion  was  entirely 
according  to  the  notion  of  the  clergyman,  so  far  as  we  know. 
In  the  earliest  days  of  the  colony  the  masters  did  not  put 
themselves  to  the  trouble  to  try  to  convert  their  slaves;  yet 
in  the  later  period  they  seem  to  have  been  more  interested. 
Mr.  Taylor,  in  speaking  in  1716  about  the  Duckinfield  slaves, 

1  Col.  Recs.,  VII,  126.      2  Ibid,  VII,  424.      3  Ibid,  VII,  705. 

4  Ibid,  VIII,  553-  B  Ibid,  IX,  326. 

6  Governor  Tryon  was  thought  to  have  done  a  great  thing  when 
he  raised  the  number  of  parishes  that  had  ministers  from  five  in 
1765  to  twelve  in  1767;  yet  it  ought  to  be  remembered  that  there 
were  thirty  parishes  in  the  colony,  and  that  he  had  not  after  all 
provided  half  of  them  with  clergymen  (ibid,  VII,  103,  457,  540). 


217]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  49 

intimates  that  all  the  efforts  made  to  convert  them  were  made 
by  himself.  His  own  method  of  proceeding  with  the  negro 
converts  he  recounts  as  follows :  "  I  hope  I  took  a  method 
with  the  negro  young  man  and  the  mustee  young  woman, 
whom  I  baptized,  which  will  please  the  Society,  which  was 
this :  I  made  them  get  our  church  catechism  perfectly  without 
book,  and  then  I  took  some  pains  with  them  to  make  them 
understand  it,  and  especially  the  baptismal  covenant,  and  to 
persuade  them,  faithfully  and  constantly,  to  perform  the  great 
things  they  were  to  promise  at  their  baptism,  and  ever  after 
to  perform  to  God;  and  then  I  caused  them  to  say  the  cate- 
chism one  Lord's  Day  and  the  other  another  Lord's  Day 
before  a  large  congregation,  which  they  did  both  distinctly 
and  so  perfectly  that  all  that  heard  them  admired  their  saying 
it  so  well,  and  with  great  satisfaction  to  myself  I  baptized 
these  two  persons." 1  This  method  was  assuredly  as  credit- 
able to  the  missionary  as  to  the  converts,  and  it  is  evidence 
of  a  considerable  degree  of  intelligence  in  the  latter. 

It  was  some  time  later  before  the  public  conscience  was 
aroused  to  the  duty  of  instructing  the  slave.  In  1754  the 
instructions  sent  to  Governor  Dobbs  directed  him  with  the 
Council  and  Assembly  to  devise  some  sufficient  means  of 
converting  the  negroes  to  Christianity.  This  instruction  was 
perhaps  given  to  Governor  Johnston,  whose  instructions  we 
have  not  preserved,  and  it  was  renewed  to  Governor  Tryon 
but  nothing  came  of  it.  In  1760  Mr.  Reed,  the  clergyman 
in  Craven  County,  said  that  he  would  not  baptize  negro 
children  unless  their  masters  would  become  surety  for  their 
proper  instruction  in  religion.  The  masters,  he  said,  would 
not  take  the  pains  to  do  this.5  Mr.  Cupples,  in  Bute  County, 
wrote  in  1768  that  when  he  had  baptized  a  number  of  slave 
children,  the  engagements  for  some  were  made  by  their 
masters  and  mistresses,  and  for  others  by  older  slaves  who 
had  already  become  Christians.3 

Whether  or  not  these  converted  slaves  fared  better  than  the 
unconverted  ones  does  not  appear.    They  were  most  likely  in 

1  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  332.  J  Ibid.,  VI,  265.  s  Ibid.,  VII.,  705. 


50  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [218 

the  first  instance  slaves  who  waited  around  the  dwellings  of 
the  whites,  and  who  thus  came  under  the  religious  influences 
of  their  masters  or  mistresses.  As  these  were  converted  they 
would  become  missionaries  to  the  field  hands.  Negroes 
were  allowed  to  come  into  the  dwellings  of  the  whites  in 
order  to  attend  family  worship,1  and  this  must  have  had  a 
softening  influence  on  the  relation  between  the  two  races. 

Although  the  negroes  were  allowed  to  join  any  church 
they  might  fancy,  they  were  not  allowed  to  have  a  church 
organization  among  themselves.  To  have  one  was  at  once 
against  the  policy  of  the  English  Church  and  against  the 
sentiments  of  the  planters.  At  that  time,  as  well  as  now, 
the  negro  knew  but  little  distinction  between  church  and 
secular  organizations.  The  planters  feared  that  negro 
churches  might  become  centers  of  negro  conspiracies.  It 
was  in  this  spirit  that  there  was  incorporated  in  The  Law 
Concerning  Servants  and  Slaves,  revision  of  171 5,  the  follow- 
ing remarkable  section :  "  Be  it  further  enacted,  That  if  any 
master,  or  owner  of  negroes,  or  slaves,  or  any  other  person 
or  persons  whatsoever  in  the  government  shall  permit  or 
suffer  any  negro  or  negroes  to  build  on  their  or  either  of 
their  lands  or  any  part  thereof  any  house  under  pretense  of 
a  meeting  house  upon  account  of  worship  or  upon  any  pre- 
tense whatsoever,  and  shall  not  suppress  and  hinder  them, 
he,  she,  or  they  so  offending  shall  for  every  default  forfeit 
and  pay  fifty  pounds,  one-half  towards  defraying  the  contin- 
gent charges  of  the  government,  the  other  to  him  or 
them  that  shall  sue  for  the  same."  2  This  provision  was  aimed 
most  likely  at  attempts  to  practice  the  negroes'  old  pagan 
rites  as  well  as  at  the  having  of  Christian  worship.  It  seems 
to  have  become  unnecessary,  for  it  was  left  out  of  the  law 
of  1741. 

1  Dr.  Hawks  makes  this  statement  on  the  authority  of  a  MS. 
letter  of  Rev.  Mr.  Taylor,  dated  in  1718.  This  letter  it  has  been 
impossible  to  find  (Hawks,  History  of  North  Carolina,  II.,  p.  229). 

2  Laws  of  1715,  ch.  46,  sect.  18. 


219]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  51 

So  far  we  have  dealt  with  the  religious  life  of  the  negro 
only  as  it  regarded  the  Established  Church  in  the  colony. 
It  would  be  interesting  to  know,  also,  his  relation  to  the 
various  dissenting  churches  of  the  province.  Unfortunately, 
we  know  but  little  about  these  churches  during  the  colonial 
period.  With  the  exception  of  the  Quakers,  none  of  them, 
so  far  as  we  know,  opposed  the  ownership  of  slaves,  and  all 
of  them  seem  to  have  received  the  negroes  into  full  connec- 
tion when  they  had  professed  conversion. 

The  first  religious  body  to  worship  in  North  Carolina  was 
the  Quakers.1  From  the  first  their  attitude  toward  the  slave 
was  humane  and  brotherly.  As  early  as  1671  George  Fox 
advised  Friends  in  Barbadoes  to  train  their  negroes  in  the 
Christian  religion,  to  use  them  gently,  and  after  a  certain 
time  of  service  to  set  them  free.  In  company  with  William 
Edmundson  he  visited  that  island,  and  so  labored  with  the 
masters  there  in  behalf  of  the  slaves  that  it  was  falsely  re- 
ported that  he  was  stirring  up  the  slaves  to  insurrection. 
Both  of  these  men  came  to  North  Carolina,  and  it  is  likely 
that  they  left  the  same  views  there  in  the  minds  of  their  co- 
religionists as  they  had  taught  in  Barbadoes.  The  first  time 
the  subject  of  slavery  came  up  in  the  North  Carolina  yearly 
meeting  was  in  1740,  "when  an  epistle  was  received  from 
the  yearly  meeting  of  Virginia  concerning  bearing  arms, 
going  to  muster,  and  using  negroes  well."  In  1758  the  mat- 
ter of  "  making  provisions  for  negroes'  meeting "  was  re- 
ferred to  a  large  committee ;  and  it  was  agreed  that  meetings 
should  be  held  at  specified  times  for  the  benefit  of  the  slaves 
at  four  designated  places,  and  that  a  certain  number  of 
Friends  should  attend  these  meetings  for  the  purpose  of  pre- 
serving good  order.  At  the  same  time  to  the  former  queries 
which  were  regularly  asked  at  the  local  monthly  meetings, 
the  answers  of  which  were  reported  to  the  yearly  meeting, 
there  was  added  this  query :  "  Are  all  that  have  negroes  care- 
ful to  use  them  well,  and  encourage  them  to  come  to  meet- 

1  See  Weeks,  Church  and  State  in  North  Carolina,  Johns  Hopkins 
University  Studies,  Vol.  XI.,  pp.  230-231. 


52  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [220 

ing  as  much  as  they  reasonably  can?"  In  1768  the  subject 
next  came  up.  The  Western  Quarterly  meeting  could  not 
satisfy  themselves  as  to  the  true  intent  of  a  clause  in  the  dis- 
cipline in  regard  to  the  buying  of  slaves,  and  on  that  they 
appealed  to  the  yearly  meeting.  That  body  appointed  a 
committee  on  the  matter,  which  duly  reported  that  the  dis- 
cipline ought  to  be  understood  "  as  a  prohibition  of  buying 
negroes  to  trade  upon,  or  of  those  that  trade  in  them;  and 
that  as  the  having  of  negroes  is  a  burthen  to  such  as  are 
in  possession  of  them,  it  might  be  well  for  the  meeting  to 
advise  all  Friends  to  be  careful  not  to  buy  or  sell  in  any 
case  that  can  be  reasonably  avoided."  The  Western  Friends 
were  not  satisfied  at  this,  and  at  the  next  yearly  meeting 
asked  for  the  absolute  prohibition  of  negro  slavery.  The 
matter  was  not  decided  at  that  meeting,  and  it  was  only  in 
1770  that  it  was  definitely  disposed  of.  In  that  year  the 
query  as  to  slaves  was  made  to  read :  "  Are  all  the  Friends 
careful  to  bear  a  faithful  testimony  against  the  iniquitous 
practice  of  importing  negroes,  or  do  they  refuse  to  pur- 
chase of  those  who  make  a  trade  or  merchandise  of  them? 
And  do  they  use  those  whom  they  have  by  inheritance  or 
otherwise  well,  endeavoring  to  discourage  them  from  evil 
and  to  encourage  them  in  that  which  is  good?" 

This  was  taking  very  advanced  ground,  but  two  years 
later  the  yearly  meeting  went  further  still  and  agreed  that 
thenceforth  no  Friend  should  buy  a  slave  "  of  any  other  per- 
son than  a  friend  in  unity,"  except  to  prevent  the  separation 
of  man  and  wife,  or  of  parent  and  child,  or  for  some  other 
good  reason,  to  be  approved  by  the  monthly  meeting,  and 
furthermore,  that  no  Friend  should  sell  a  slave  to  any  one 
who  was  used  to  buying  or  selling  slaves  for  gain.  About 
the  same  time  the  Standing  Committee  formally  declared  its 
views  on  the  slave  trade  in  the  most  vigorous  language. 
They  said: 

"  Being  fully  convinced  in  our  minds  and  judgments,  beyond  a 
doubt  or  scruple,  of  the  great  evil  and  abomination  of  the  impor- 
tation of  negroes  from  Africa,  by  which  iniquitous  practice  great 


221]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  53 

numbers  of  our  fellow-creatures  with  their  posterity  are  doomed 
to  perpetual  and  cruel  bondage  without  any  regard  to  their  natural 
right  to  liberty  and  freedom,  which  they  have  not  forfeited  through 
any  act  of  their  own  or  consent  thereto,  but  by  mere  force  and 
cruelty — we  are  impressed  with  abhorrence  and  detestation  against 
such  a  practice  in  a  Christian  community;  for  experience  makes  it 
fully  manifest  that  instead  of  their  embracing  true  religion  and 
virtue  in  exchange  for  their  natural  liberty,  they  have  become 
nurseries  of  pride  and  idleness  to  our  youth — in  such  a  manner 
that  morality  and  true  piety  are  much  wounded  where  slave-keeping 
abounds,  to  the  great  grief  of  true  Christian  minds. 

"  And  therefore  we  cannot  but  invite  our  fellow-subjects,  and 
especially  the  Representatives  of  North  Carolina  (as  much  as  lies 
at  their  door  for  the  good  of  the  people  and  prosperity  of  the 
Provinces),  to  join  with  their  prudent  brethren,  the  Burgesses  of  the 
colony  of  Virginia,  in  presenting  an  address  to  the  throne  of  Great 
Britain,  in  order  to  be  as  eyes  to  the  blind,  and  mouths  to  the 
dumb;  and  whether  it  succeed  or  not,  we  shall  have  the  secret 
satisfaction  in  our  own  minds  of  having  used  our  best  endeavors 
to  have  so  great  a  torrent  of  evil  effectually  stopped  at  the  place 
where  it  unhappily  had  permission  to  begin. 

Thomas  Nicholson,        John  Symons, 
Caleb  Trueblood,  John  Sanders, 

Ralph  Fletcher,  [and  fifteen  others]." 

At  the  same  time  the  committee  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
London  Friends  expressing  their  approval  of  an  address 
against  the  slave  trade  which  the  Virginia  Assembly  was 
about  to  present  to  the  king,  saying  that  they  had  spoken 
of  the  matter  to  some  North  Carolina  Assemblymen,  and 
that  they  hoped  to  get  a  like  petition  from  that  colony. 
They  also  referred  to  a  law  of  the  latter  colony  which  re- 
stricted emancipation  to  cases  of  meritorious  conduct,  by 
which  "  such  Friends  as  desire  to  liberate  their  slaves  from 
principles  of  justice  and  Christianity  are  under  a  great  diffi- 
culty." Thus  while  the  king  was  giving  instructions  to  his 
governors  to  allow  no  act  to  pass  the  Assembly  to  prohibit 
the  slave  trade,  the  Friends  were  forming  their  views  to  ask 
that  it  should  be  discontinued. 

None  of  these  declarations  had  gone  so  far  as  actual  eman- 
cipation. It  was  but  two  years  later,  1774,  when  that  matter 
was  destined  to  come  up.  Thomas  Newby  becoming  dis- 
satisfied with  owning  slaves,  brought  the  matter  before  the 


54  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [222 

yearly  meeting.  It  was  decided  "  That  all  Friends  finding 
themselves  under  a  burden  and  uneasiness  on  account  of 
keeping  slaves  may  set  them  at  liberty  by  applying  to  the 
monthly  meeting."  Persons  were  also  to  be  appointed  to 
prepare  instruments  of  writing  suitable  for  emancipation,  and 
to  decide  whether  or  not  those  whom  it  was  proposed  to  free 
could  support  themselves.  In  the  same  year  Thomas  Nich- 
olson was  permitted  to  publish  "  Liberty  and  Property,"  a 
pamphlet  regarding  a  change  in  the  law  of  emancipation. 

One  step  farther  was  taken  before  the  limits  of  our  subject 
were  reached.  In  the  yearly  meeting  of  1775  the  Western 
Quarter  again  brought  up  the  query  respecting  slaves.  They 
desired  such  changes  to  be  made  "  as  would  relieve  some  dis- 
tressed minds."  The  committee  to  whom  the  matter  was  refer- 
red found  that  it  could  be  settled  only  by  the  prohibition  of 
buying  or  selling  slaves  without  the  consent  of  the  monthly 
meetings,  and,  loth  to  act,  returned  the  affair  to  the  meeting 
as  too  weighty  for  them.  The  meeting  then  took  it  up  and 
ordered :  "  That  Friends  in  unity  shall  neither  buy  nor  sell 
a  negro  without  the  consent  of  the  monthly  meeting  to  which 
they  belong."  The  succeeding  year  the  subject  was  again 
brought  up,  this  time  by  the  Eastern  Quarter.  After  much 
deliberation,  and  a  most  earnest  desire  to  settle  the  matter 
in  the  spirit  of  love,  it  was  the  "  unanimous  sense  of  the 
meeting  that  all  the  members  thereof  who  hold  slaves  be 
earnestly  and  affectionately  advised  to  clear  their  hands  of 
them  as  soon  as  they  possibly  can ;  and  in  the  meantime  that 
no  member  be  permitted  to  buy  or  to  sell  any  slaves,  or  hire 
any  from  those  who  are  not  of  our  Society."  Any  one  per- 
sistently violating  this  decision  was  to  be  "  disowned  as  in 
other  offences  against  the  Church."  Apart  from  its  remark- 
able significance  as  being  the  culmination  of  several  steps 
towards  the  abolition  of  slavery  by  the  Friends,  this  action 
is  most  noteworthy  for  its  display  of  the  harmonizing  power 
of  the  Quaker  principles.  For  several  years  these  people 
had  had  a  disagreement  over  this  question.  It  had  been 
settled  time  after  time  only  to  be  reopened.     Step  by  step 


223]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  55 

the  advocates  of  slavery  had  been  pushed  back.  Finally  they 
were  defeated.  What  did  they  then  do?  They  "were  able 
very  affectionately  to  express  their  sentiments  "  and  to  make 
the  decision  unanimous.  It  was  reserved  for  this  little  meet- 
ing of  simple  Friends  to  show  the  world  that  the  question  of 
slavery  could  be  debated  and  decided  without  either  side 
surrendering-  itself  to  a  passion.  In  this  respect  it  was 
greater  than  the  Congress  of  the  United  States.1 

Thus  did  the  Friends  gradually  come  up  to  the  position 
of  entire  abolition,  giving  themselves  up  to  the  cause  in  1776, 
the  year  in  which  the  great  war  for  national  freedom  was 
begun.  With  the  balance  of  the  story  we  may  not  deal  here. 
It  is  sufficient  to  say  that  the  Society  had  committed  itself 
to  the  cause  of  freedom,  and  that  in  so  doing  it  had  started 
the  first  movement  in  that  direction  in  the  history  of  the 
province. 

The  Baptists  came  into  North  Carolina  at  an  early  date. 
By  the  middle  of  the  eighteenth  century  they  had  become 
strong  in  the  central  and  eastern  part  of  the  upper  tier  of 
counties.2  We  know  but  little  about  them,  however,  for  this 
early  period.  They  seem  to  have  received  negroes  into 
church  fellowship  with  readiness.  Mr.  Barnett,  a  missionary 
of  the  English  Church,  said  that  they  allowed  negroes  to 
speak  at  their  meetings.3  Their  kinder  feeling  for  the  slaves 
is  further  shown  by  a  reply  of  the  Kehukee  Baptist  Associa- 
tion to  a  question  asked  in  1783  in  regard  to  the  duty  of  a 
master  toward  his  slave  who  refused  to  attend  family 
worship.  The  answer  was :  "  It  is  the  duty  of  every  master 
of  a  family  to  give  his  slaves  liberty  to  attend  the  worship 
of  God  in  his  family,  and  likewise  it  is  his  duty  to  exhort 

1  For  these  facts  on  the  relation  of  the  Quakers  to  slavery  the 
author  is  indebted  to  "  A  Narrative  of  Some  of  the  Proceedings  of 
the  North  Carolina  Yearly  Meeting  on  the  Subject  of  Slavery  within 
its  Limits,  1848."  This  is  a  rare  pamphlet,  only  one  copy  of  which 
he  has  been  able  to  hear  of.  That  has  been  kindly  furnished  to  him 
by  the  Library  of  Guilford  College,  North  Carolina.     See  pp.  1-12. 

2  Col.  Recs.,  III.,  48. 

3  Col.  Recs.,  VII.,  164. 


56  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [224 

them  to  it,  and  to  endeavor  to  convince  them  of  their  duty; 
and  then  to  leave  theni  to  their  own  choice."  1  Although 
this  opinion  was  given  in  the  aftermath  of  the  Revolution, 
it  no  doubt  voiced  a  spirit  which  had  been  in  existence  for 
some  time  previous. 

There  were  many  Presbyterians  in  the  province,  but  un- 
fortunately we  have  no  evidence  as  to  their  relation  to  slav- 
ery. They  probably  did  not  materially  differ  from  the 
members  of  the  Established  Church  in  that  regard.  Along 
with  these  ought  to  be  put  a  considerable  number  of  Luth- 
erans and  members  of  the  Dutch  Reformed  Church.2  The 
Methodists,  whose  introduction  into  the  South  was  so  closely 
connected  with  the  religious  life  of  the  slaves,  came  so  late 
into  the  State  that  they  do  not  properly  fall  within  the  period 
with  which  we  here  have  to  deal. 

Social  Life. — Mr.  Taylor,  the  missionary,  writing  in  1719, 
gave  the  North  Carolina  slaves  an  excellent  reputation.  He 
said  of  the  Duckinfield  slaves  that  they  "  were  as  sensible 
and  civil  and  as  much  inclined  to  Christianity  and  things 
that  are  good  as  ever  I  knew  any  slaves,  any  slaves  in  this 
place,  wherever  I  have  been,  and  indeed  so  are  the  slaves 
generally  in  this  province,  and  many  of  the  slaves  of  this 
country,  I  am  persuaded,  would  be  converted,  baptized,  and 
saved,  if  their  masters  were  not  so  wicked  as  they  are,  and 
did  not  oppose  their  conversion,  baptism,  and  salvation,  so 
much  as  they  do."  It  is  likely  that  Mr.  Taylor's  success  in 
teaching  the  catechism  to  the  two  Duckinfield  negroes  had 
made  him  a  little  too  hopeful  of  the  race.  It  is  also  prob- 
able that  the  negroes  he  here  came  into  contact  with  were 
superior  to  the  average  negro  of  the  country. 

Brickell,  writing  about  1731,  probably  came  nearer  the 
truth.  From  what  he  says  we  may  divide  the  negroes  in 
the  colony  into  two  classes:  (1)  Those  who  had  recently  been 
brought  from  Guinea,  and  (2)  those  who  had  been  reared  in 

1  Biggs,  History  of  the  Kehukee  Baptist  Association,  pp.  59-60. 

2  Bernheim,  The  German  Settlements  and  the  Lutheran  Churches 
of  the  Carolinas.     Cf.  pp.  148  and  235. 


225]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  57 

the  colonies.  The  latter  were  much  more  manageable. 
/This  was  because  of  training  among  Christians,  "which,"  he 
'  said,  "  very  much  polishes  and  refines  them  from  their  bar- 
barous and  stubborn  natures." 1  The  former  often  rebelled. 
As  soon  as  they  rebelled  they  would  take  refuge  in  the 
swamps,  whence  they  would  issue  to  commit  depredations 
on  the  property  of  the  whites.  Such  fugitives  usually  made 
themselves  very  much  dreaded  on  account  of  their  cruel  and 
treacherous  dispositions.  They  had,  however,  one  foe  in  the 
forests.  The  Indians,  he  said,  had  a  natural  and  irreconcil- 
able hatred  for  the  negroes  and  delighted  in  torturing  them. 
When  they  would  meet  runaways  in  the  woods  they  would 
attack  them  vigorously,  either  killing  them  or  driving  them 
back  to  the  whites.2  The  price  of  negroes  ranged  from 
fifteen  to  twenty-six  pounds  sterling,  varying  according  to 
age,  health  and  disposition.8  The  amount  which  the  Assem- 
bly fixed  as  the  maximum  price  to  be  paid  for  executed 
slaves  was  eighty  pounds,  proclamation  money/ 

The  intermarriage  of  slaves  was  a  matter  of  little  cere- 
mony. The  masters  of  the  contracting  party  must  first  con- 
sent to  the  union.  That  being  arranged,  the  groom  sought 
his  bride,  offered  her  some  toy,  as  a  brass  ring,  and  if  his 
gift  were  accepted,  the  marriage  was  considered  as  made. 
If  the  couple  separated  the  present  was  always  returned. 
This  occurred  often,  at  times  against  the  will  of  the  par- 
ties. If  the  women  bore  no  children  in  two  or  three  years, 
says  Brickell,  "  the  planters  oblige  them  to  take  a  second, 
third,  fourth,  fifth,  or  more  husbands  or  bedfellows — a  fruit- 
ful woman  amongst  them  being  very  much  valued  by  the 
planters  and  a  numerous  issue  esteemed  the  greatest  riches 

1  Brickell,  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  272. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  273. 

8  In  Virginia  in  1708  the  price  was,  according  to  Jennings,  "  20  to 
30  pounds  a  head  for  those  sold  by  the  [African]  Company,  and 
from  30  to  35  pounds  a  head  for  the  like  kinds  sold  by  separate 
traders,  who  in  general  have  sold  theirs  at  a  higher  rate  than  the 
Company."     Col.   Recs.,  I.,  693. 

4  In  1774  we  find  a  Congo  negro  offered  for  sale  in  Halifax  for 
£140  colonial  currency.     Ibid.,  IX.,  826-827. 


58  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [226 

in  this  country."  The  children  belonged  to  the  owner  of  the 
mother,  and  the  planters  took  pains  to  bring  them  up  prop- 
erly. The  slaves  showed  great  jealousy  among  themselves 
on  account  of  their  wives  or  mistresses.  With  such  money 
as  they  could  pick  up  they  bought  bracelets,  toys,  and  rib- 
bons for  the  women.1 

The  marriage  of  a  white  person  and  a  negro  was  from 
the  first  considered  exceedingly  undesirable.  The  law 
of  171 5,  already  cited,  provided  that  no  white  man  or  white 
woman  should  marry  any  negro,  mulatto  or  Indian  on  pen- 
alty of  fifty  pounds,  to  be  collected  of  that  one  of  the  con- 
tracting parties  who  should  be  white.  It  also  stipulated  that 
any  clergyman  or  other  person  who  should  officiate  at  such 
a  marriage  should  also  be  liable  to  a  fine  of  fifty  pounds, 
one-half  to  go  to  the  informer  and  one-half  to  go  to  the 
public  (sects.  15  and  16).  Explicit  as  was  this  law,  it  did  not 
succeed  in  preventing  such  unions.  The  records  show  that 
two  persons  were  indicted  within  two  years  for  performing 
such  a  marriage  ceremony.  In  one  case  the  suit  was 
dropped;2  in  the  other  case  the  clergyman  went  before  the 
Chief  Justice  and  confessed,  as  it  seems,  of  his  own  accord.8 
This  was  a  year  after  the  occurrence  and  no  action  was  taken 
thereon  at  that  term  of  the  court.  Wherever  these  unions 
occurred  the  whites  who  were  parties  to  them  were  of  the 
lower  class.  In  1727  a  white  woman  was  indicted  in  the 
General  Court  because  she  had  left  her  husband  and  was 
cohabiting  with  a  negro  slave.  The  case  was  referred  to 
the  precinct  court  for  trial.  It  came,  probably,  under  the 
law  against  fornication  and   adultery.4     So   far  as   general 

1  Brickell,  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  pp.  272-275. 

2  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  591,  594,  602. 

3  In  this  case  it  seems  that  the  clergyman  confessed  judgment  in 
order  to  save  himself  from  one-half  of  the  fine.  The  Chief  Justice 
reported  the  matter  just  as  the  court  had  finished  its  business.  It 
is  possible  that  the  matter  was  taken  up  at  the  next  term  of  court, 
the  records  of  which  are  lost  (cf.  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  672;  and  Hawks, 
History  of  North  Carolina,  II.,  126-7). 

4  Cf.  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  704  and  711. 


227]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  59 

looseness  was  concerned,  this  law  of  171 5  had  no  force. 
Brickell,  who  was  a  physician,  says  that  the  white  men  of 
the  colony  suffered  a  great  deal  from  a  malignant  kind  of 
venereal  disease  which  they  took  from  the  slaves.1 

We  have  no  evidence  that  any  considerable  number  of 
the  whites  attempted  to  teach  the  slaves  at  that  early  date. 
If  they  did  not  try  to  impart  a  knowledge  of  religion  to  them 
it  is  not  likely  that  they  tried  to  teach  them  secular  things. 
As  the  condition  of  the  people  became  more  settled,  however, 
not  a  few  of  the  household  servants  were  taught  to  read  and 
write.  We  have  the  slightest  view  of  an  organized  effort  in 
that  direction.  In  1763  Mr.  Stewart,  a  missionary  in  the 
colony,  writes  home  about  a  society  called  "  Dr.  Bray's 
Associates,"  which  was  conducting  a  school  for  the  Indians 
and  negroes.  Mr.  Stewart  was  superintendent  of  their 
schools  in  the  province,  but  at  that  time  the  attendance  was 
but  eight  Indians  and  two  negro  boys.  He  added  that  he 
hoped  "  that  God  will  open  the  eyes  of  the  whites  everywhere, 
that  they  may  no  longer  keep  the  ignorant  in  distress,  but 
assist  in  the  charitable  designs  of  this  pious  society." 2  The 
tenor  of  his  letter  indicates  that  the  society  was  at  that  time 
recently  organized  in  the  province.  This  is  the  only  knowl- 
edge we  have  of  it.  What  success  it  had  we  cannot  say. 
The  fact  that  it  left  no  history  indicates  that  it  did  little  for 
the  negroes. 

Although  the  slaves  owned  by  the  very  first  settlers  were 
few,  those  who  succeeded  them  had  larger  numbers.  Every- 
where in  the  colonization  of  America  the  frontiersman  has 
been  a  distinct  species.  Used  to  settling  down  on  little 
farms  on  the  outskirts  of  civilization,  he  has  found  it  hard 
to  become  absorbed  into  the  larger  life  of  a  settled  commu- 
nity. It  has  most  often  been  his  fate  to  recover  from  nature 
a  rim  of  forest  land,  and  then  giving  that  up  to  some  wealthy 

1  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  48. 

3  Col.  Recs.,  VI.,  995-6.  Brickell  says  that  several  slaves  born 
in  the  colony  could  read  and  write.  This  was  about  1731  (Natural 
History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  275). 


60  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [228 

habitant  of  civilized  life,  to  move  on  toward  the  West.  This 
happened  in  North  Carolina.  Many  of  the  people  who 
occupied  their  little  holdings  during  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury sold  them  early  in  the  eighteenth  and  sought  other 
lands  for  a  song  on  the  frontiers.  The  newcomers  were  men 
of  means.  They  usually  brought  slaves  with  them.1  Their 
coming  marks  the  change  from  the  system  of  a  few  slaves 
to  that  of  many.  The  same  process  was  facilitated  in  the 
newer  parts  of  the  country  by  the  opening  of  the  turpentine 
industry.  Here  slaves  were  very  profitable,  and  large  num- 
bers of  them  were  taken  to  the  high  tracts  of  long-straw 
pine  which  lay  back  from  the  low  grounds  along  the  river.1 

The  first  experiences  in  the  acquisition  of  the  habits  of 
civilization  by  the  slaves  had  in  them  an  element  of  the 
grotesque.  Their  masters  were  quick  to  see  this,  and  in 
many  ways  did  they  become  objects  of  amusement.  Brickell 
speaks  especially  about  their  names.  Among  them  he  found 
Diana,  Violet,  Strawberry,  Drunkard,  Money,  Piper,  Fiddler, 
Jupiter,  and  Venus.  These  names  suggest  the  habitual  taste 
of  the  whites  as  much  as  the  fancy  of  the  negroes.  The 
planters  gave  the  slaves  small  patches  on  which  they  were 
allowed  to  raise  tobacco  for  themselves.  This  they  sold  for 
money.  The  amount  thus  realized  was  supplemented  by 
what  they  could  earn  on  Sundays.  Brickell  says  they  used 
to  gather  snake-root  on  Sunday.3 

Slave  Insurrections. — The  continued  fear  of  rebellion  made 
the  whites  very  severe  in  dealing  with  recalcitrant  negroes. 
Brickell  bears  witness  to  this  fact.  He  says  he  had  fre- 
quently seen  them  whipped  until  large  pieces  of  skin  were 
hanging  down  their  backs,  "  yet  I  never  observed  one  of 

1  Governor  Burrington  says  that  early  in  the  eighteenth  century 
a  man  from  Virginia  bought  eleven  adjacent  plantations  in  the  older 
part  of  the  colony.  The  former  owners  moved  on  to  the  westward. 
On  these  plantations,  on  which  white  people  had  formerly  lived, 
there  now  lived  a  white  man,  his  wife,  and  about  ten  slaves.  Col. 
Recs.,  III.,  430. 

2  Ibid.,  III.,  431. 

8  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  pp.  274-276. 


229]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  61 

them  shed  a  tear."  He  was  once  present  when  a  negro  was 
hanged  by  a  verdict  of  the  neighboring  whites,  because  he, had 
wounded  his  master.1  The  master  had  tried  hard  to  save 
the  slave's  life,  but  the  people  were  not  to  be  moved.  The 
slave-owners  in  the  vicinity,  according  to  their  custom, 
brought  all  their  slaves  to  witness  the  execution,  hoping  that 
it  might  be  a  wholesome  object-lesson.  Not  all  executions, 
however,  were  so  mild  as  hanging.  In  1773  a  negro  in 
Granville  County  was  burned  alive,  his  crime  being  the 
murder  of  a  white  man.  In  1778  another  was  burned  alive 
in  Brunswick  County  for  the  same  offense.  Judge  Walter 
Clark  in  speaking  of  this  event  remarks :  "  Doubtless  there 
are  other  records  of  similar  proceedings  in  other  counties."  2 
The  law  against  insurrections  was  as  severe.  Having  be- 
gun to  have  slaves,  there  was  the  greatest  necessity  that  the 
strictest  means  should  be  used  to  keep  down  any  rebellion. 
In  1740  a  law  for  this  and  other  purposes  was  introduced 
into  the  Assembly.  It  was  going  successfully  through  that 
body  when  it  was  cut  short  by  a  prorogation  arising  out  of 
a  dispute  on  another  subject.8  This  law  was  doubtless  similar 
in  import  to  the  law  of  1741/  which  has  already  been  cited. 
It  contained  a  clause  which  provided  that  if  three  or  more 
slaves  conspired  to  rebel  or  to  make  insurrection,  or  plotted 
to  murder  any  person  whatsoever,  they  should  be  guilty  of 
felony  and  punished  with  death  (sect.  47).  In  1755  the 
Assembly's  committee  on  propositions  and  grievances 
recommended  that  "  the  searching  and  patrolling  for  negroes 
be  made  more  frequent  than  heretofore,"  5  but  no  action  was 
taken  on  the  recommendation.  In  the  Assembly  that  met  a 
few  months  later,  but  in  the  same  year,  a  like  recommenda- 

1  Brickell  says  this  was  the  law.  No  such  law  is  to  be  seen  on  the 
statute  books.  It  is  likely  that  this  was  a  custom  usually  followed 
in  these  courts  for  negroes,  and  this  may  be  what  Brickell  meant 
to  say  (cf.  ibid.,  p.  272). 

*  See  documents  republished  in  the  Wake  Forest  Student,  Nov., 
1895,  and  in  the  North  Carolina  University  Magazine,  May,  1894, 
P-  40S-' 

1  Col.  Recs.,  IV.,  542,  549,  550.  *  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  24. 

'  Col.  Recs.,  V.,  299. 


62  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [230 

tion  was  made,  but  it  met  the  same  fate.1  While  the  province 
was  arming  for  the  Revolution,  negro  risings  were  especially 
dreaded.  The  Whigs  and  the  Tories  were  so  nearly  equal 
in  numbers  that  the  slaves,  if  they  should  have  united,  would 
have  been  very  troublesome.  Moreover,  it  was  reported, 
and  no  doubt  believed  by  many  people,  that  the  British  in- 
tended to  arm  the  slaves  against  the  patriots.  This  induced 
the  colonists  to  increase  their  patrole,  and  out  of  the  excite- 
ment that  was  thus  aroused  came  the  only  alarm  due  to  a 
reported  insurrection  of  slaves  that  we  meet  in  the  colonial 
period. 

In  Pitt,  Beaufort,  and  the  adjoining  counties  in  1775  the 
report  was  spread  that  a  certain  ship-captain  named  Johnston, 
of  White  Haven,  who  was  then  loading  with  naval  stores  in 
Pamlico  River,  was  inciting  the  negroes  to  rebellion.  From 
the  stories  told  by  some  negroes  the  whites  thought  they 
had  discovered  "  a  deep-laid,  horrid,  tragick  plan  laid  for  de- 
stroying the  inhabitants  of  this  province,  without  regard  to 
person,  age,  or  sex."  The  alleged  plan  was  to  the  effect  that 
through  the  teachings  of  Captain  Johnston  all  the  slaves  in 
that  region  had  agreed  to  murder  on  a  given  night  all  the 
whites  of  the  houses  where  they  (the  slaves)  lived,  and  then 
to  proceed  from  house  to  house  toward  the  interior  of  the 
province,  murdering  as  they  went.  Here,  they  were  told, 
they  would  find  the  inhabitants  and  the  government  ready 
to  aid  them.  Johnston  was  just  sailing  at  that  time,  and  he 
was  reported  to  have  said  that  he  would  return  in  the  autumn 
and  take  his  choice  of  the  plantations  along  the  river.2  The 
whites  believed  the  story,  and  for  a  while  the  entire  region 
was  in  a  fever  of  excitement.  The  terrified  people  pursued 
an  imaginary  band  of  150  negroes  "for  several  days,  but 
none  were  taken  nor  seen,  though  they  had  several  times 
been  fired  at."  This  was  as  near  a  discovery  of  the  real 
movement  as  they  ever  came.     A  number  of  slaves  were 

1  Col.  Recs.,  V.,  548. 
a  Col.   Recs.,  IX.,  94-95. 


231]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  63 

arrested  on  suspicion,  and  some  were  whipped  severely,  but 
none  were  proved  to  be  connected  with  any  plot.  The  report 
seems  to  have  been  entirely  unfounded.  Indeed,  it  is  not  im- 
possible that  it  may  have  been  wholly  concocted  for  political 
purposes.  The  charges  that  the  British  were  encouraging 
the  slaves  to  rebel,  the  British  sea-captain,  and  the  necessity 
of  filling  up  the  militia — all  are  factors  which  would  have 
made  the  spreading  of  such  a  report  not  a  bad  piece  of 
politics,  as  politics  went  in  those  days.  At  any  rate  the 
occurrence  must  have  been  advantageous  to  the  patriots. 

In  connection  with  this  idea  one  ought  to  mention  the 
charges  made  to  the  same  effect  against  the  last  royal  gov- 
ernor of  the  province.  The  patriots  charged  that  Martin, 
when  he  took  refuge  on  a  British  man-of-war  in  the  mouth 
of  the  Cape  Fear,  sent  emissaries  to  arouse  the  negroes,  and 
that  the  blacks  were  in  fact  fleeing  thither.  This  charge 
Martin  emphatically  and  indignantly  denied.  The  only  foun- 
dation there  seems  to  have  been  to  the  report  was  the  fact 
that  the  Governor's  men  had  made  some  raids  into  the  in- 
terior, in  order  to  get  supplies,  and  that  on  these  expeditions 
they  captured  some  slaves,  which  they  took  with  them.  The 
Governor  wrote  a  letter  in  which  he  gave  it  as  his  opinion 
"  that  nothing  c'ould  justify  the  design,  falsely  imputed  to 
me,  of  giving  encouragement  to  the  negroes  but  the  actual 
and  declared  rebellion  of  the  King's  subjects  and  the  failure 
of  all  other  means  of  maintaining  the  King's  government." * 
This  was  taken  as  a  threat.  The  patriots  ordered  the  letter 
to  be  published.  They  said  that  after  turning  it  "  in  every 
construction  of  language  "  they  could  only  consider  it  "  a 
justification  of  the  design  of  encouraging  the  slaves  to  revolt 
when  every  other  means  should  fail  to  preserve  the  King's 
government  from  open  and  declared  rebellion,  and  a  publick 
avowal  of  a  crime  of  so  horrid  and  truly  black  a  complexion, 
could  only  originate  in  a  soul  lost  to  every  sense  of  feeling 
and  humanity  and  long  hackneyed  in  the  detestable  and 
wicked  purpose  of  subjugating  the  colonies  to  the  most  abject 

1  Col.  Recs.,  X.,  138. 


64  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [232 

slavery." *  So  far  as  this  declaration  referred  to  Martin's 
private  character  it  was  unjust;  he  was  not  a  man  "lost  to 
feeling  and  humanity."  His  worst  faults  were,  perhaps, 
obstinacy  and  lack  of  decision.  His  greatest  misfortune  was 
to  have  to  stand  in  the  breach  in  order  to  hold  up  an  idea 
which  the  spirit  of  the  people  had  outgrown. 

^ol.  Recs.,  X.,  138a. 


233]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  65 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  FREE  NEGRO  AND  THE  INDIAN  SLAVE. 

Emancipation. — Reference  has  already  been  made  to  the 
fact  that  as  slavery  in  North  Carolina  became  more  extensive 
it  became  stricter.  When  there  were  but  few  slaves  the 
white  people  believed  that  they  could  manage  them  with 
little  difficulty.  There  was  also  at  that  time  a  tendency  to 
leave  the  individual  rather  than  the  law  to  deal  with  them. 
As  the  institution  grew — gaining,  on  the  whole,  on  the 
whites  in  population,  and  perhaps  as  the  slaves  themselves 
began  to  show  signs  of  intelligent  organization,  the  domi- 
nant class  began  to  draw  tighter  the  cords  of  bondage.  The 
masters  viewed  with  suspicion  any  thing  or  any  people  who 
were  disposed  to  stand  in  the  way  of  the  perpetuation  of 
slavery.  Now  it  was  just  this  that  the  free  negro  would  do. 
With  no  master  to  watch  him,  with  a  sympathy  for  the 
slaves,  with  liberty  to  go  or  come  at  pleasure,  and  with  im- 
munity from  the  prohibition  of  carrying  arms,  he  was  a  very 
undesirable  personage  to  the  slaveholders.  Looked  at  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  latter,  limits  must  be  put  to  the  rights, 
and  the  making,  of  free  negroes.  As  they  realized  this  the 
more,  the  narrower  did  they  draw  these  limits. 

In  the  law  of  171 5  it  was  enacted  that  no  one  should  make 
a  contract  for  his  freedom  with  a  runaway  or  refractory  slave, 
provided  this  should  not  be  construed  to  prohibit  a  man 
from  liberating  his  slaves  for  meritorious  conduct.  It  was 
provided  that  in  case  a  slave  should  be  freed  he  should  leave 
the  colony  in  six  months  after  emancipation,  on  penalty  of 
being  sold  for  five  years  to  any  one  who  would  agree  to 
take  him  out  of  the  government  (sect.  17).  A  way  was  soon 
found  to  avoid  this  by  taking  freed  negroes   out  of  the 


66  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  *      [234 

country  for  a  while  and  then  bringing  them  back.  In  17231 
a  law  was  passed  which  provided  that  persons  who  should 
be  freed  and  who  should  return  to  the  country  after  leaving 
it  should  be  sold  into  slavery  for  seven  years.  At  the  end 
of  this  term  they  must  leave  within  six  months  or  again  be 
sold  for  seven  years.  Persons  who  concealed  slaves  thus 
sold,  pretending  that  they  did  it  for  debt  or  otherwise,  were 
to  forfeit  £100.  The  law  of  17412  declared  that  no  slave 
should  be  set  free  except  for  meritorious  services,  and  that 
such  services  must  be  judged  and  certified  by  the  county 
court.  If  a  slave  otherwise  freed  were  found  in  the  province 
at  the  end  of  six  months,  the  churchwardens  should  arrest 
him  and  sell  him  at  the  next  county  court  for  the  use  of  the 
parish;  but  if  he  should  escape  from  the  parish  before  the 
expiration  of  six  months  and  should  return  thereafter,  he 
should  be  sold  by  the  churchwardens  as  just  stated.  This 
was  a  hardship,  inasmuch  as  it  restricted  the  liberation  of 
slaves  to  meritorious  conduct,  to  be  judged  by  the  court. 
It  afforded  a  full  opportunity,  it  is  true,  for  the  action  of 
the  philanthropic  feelings  of  the  county  courts,  but  at  the 
same  time  it  gave  that  tribunal  a  chance  to  prohibit  emancipa- 
tion entirely,  if  it  so  desired.  That  it  did  not  act  favorably 
to  the  slaves  is  certain;  for  we  find  the  Quakers  in  their 
letter  to  the  London  Friends,  which  has  already  been  cited, 
complaining  that  this  requirement  hindered  them  in  their 
purpose  of  emancipation. 

Free  Negroes. — The  law  of  1741,  although  it  made  emanci- 
pation more  difficult,  was  yet  more  favorable  to  the  free 
negro,  since  it  did  not  require  those  who  had  been  liberated 
by  regular  means  to  leave  the  colony.  Earlier  than  this  a 
great  many  free  negroes  had  come  into  the  colony.  The 
Assembly,  which  had  the  power  to  condition  a  man's  libera- 
tion on  his  leaving  the  colony,  did  not  have  the  power  to 
exclude  from  the  province  any  free  English  citizen  who  in 
the  beginnings  of  the  government  had  been  given  the  privi- 
lege of  going  into  the  colony  and  living  there.     This  policy 

1  Law  of  1723,  ch.  5.  2  Laws,  1741,  ch.  24,  sect.  56. 


235]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  67 

was  adopted  also  in  the  other  colonies.1  It  is  doubtful  if  it 
kept  the  number  of  free  negroes  in  any  colony  at  a  lower 
figure.  It  simply  meant  that  the  free  negroes  of  one  prov- 
ince were  driven  into  the  next.  Had  they  been  left  in  the 
regions  in  which  they  were  liberated,  where  they  could  have 
been  still  under  the  influence  of  the  old  surroundings,  they 
could  have  been  managed  more  easily.  These  were  two 
of  the  sources  of  the  free  colored  population.  Another  was 
the  children  of  white  women  by  negro  men.  There  is  evi- 
dence that  not  a  few  of  such  people  were  in  the  government.2 
Taken  all  together,  there  were  a  considerable  number  of 
free  negroes  among  the  people  by  the  close  of  the  colonial 
period. 

The  privileges  of  the  free  negroes  were  few.  They  were 
not  allowed  to  vote.  The  election  law  of  171 5  provided  that 
no  negro,  Indian,  or  mulatto  should  have  the  right  to  vote 
for  a  member  of  the  Assembly.  This  being  the  only  elective 
civil  office  in  the  colony,  they  were  completely  disfranchised.8 
This  law  was  repealed  by  order  of  the  King  in  1737/  one 
of  the  complaints  being  that  freemen  as  well  as  freeholders 
were  allowed  to  vote.5  No  further  law  was  made  on  the 
subject  till  1760.  In  the  meantime  the  basis  of  suffrage  was 
fixed  in  the  instructions  to  the  governors.  It  was  thus 
arranged  that  no  one  but  a  freeholder  could  vote 
for  an  Assemblyman.6  The  law  of  1760  continued  this 
arrangement,  and  went  on  to  define  a  freeholder  as  a 
person  who  held  in  fee  simple  or  for  life  an  estate  of 
fifty  acres  of  land.7  This  requirement  gave  little  oppor- 
tunity to  the  free  negro.  We  have  no  means  of  know- 
ing whether  or  not  any  free  negroes  voted  under  it.  In 
J835  when  the  constitution  was  revised  there  was  a  proposi- 
tion before  the  convention  to  make  them  eligible  to  vote 

1  Hening,  Statutes  at  Large,  III.,  87,  IV.,  133. 

2  Debates  of  the  Convention  of  1835,  p.  351. 

3  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  214-215.    *  Ibid.,  IV.,  251.     5  Ibid.,  III.,  180-181. 

6  See  the  instructions  to  Governor  Dobbs.  ibid.,  V,   11 10. 

7  Laws  of  1760  (4th  session),  ch.  1,  sects.  3  and  4. 


68  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [236 

when  they  owned  $250  worth  of  property.  There  were  a 
number  that  would  have  been  benefited  by  that  provision 
at  that  time.1  Possibly  there  were  a  few  who  would  have 
come  within  a  like  provision  in  the  days  before  the  Revolu- 
tion. Like  the  slaves,  they  had  not  the  right  of  giving  evi- 
dence against  white  men.  The  right  of  sitting  on  the  jury 
they  probably  did  not  have.  The  law  provided  that  free- 
holders "  knowing  and  substantial "  should  be  jurymen.2 
This  was  ample  opportunity  to  exclude  them,  and  it  was 
very  likely  used.  Although  no  evidence  appears  on  the 
point,  still  it  is  extremely  unlikely  that  one  of  them  ever 
held  office. 

If  their  rights  from  the  State  were  abridged,  their  duties 
toward  it  were  not  impaired.  They  were  required  to  bear 
their  share  in  the  burden  of  government,  on  an  equal  footing 
with  white  men.  A  law  of  171 5  enacted  that  all  slaves,  male 
and  female,  from  the  age  of  twelve,  and  all  "  males  not  being 
slaves  "  from  the  age  of  sixteen,  should  be  deemed  taxables.* 
Free  negro  women  were  thus  untaxed.  They  did  not  remain 
in  this  condition  long,  however.  In  1723  a  law  was  passed 
which  provided  that  inasmuch  as  many  free  negroes, 
mulattoes,  and  other  persons  of  mixed  blood*  had  moved 
into  the  province,  henceforth  all  free  negroes,  mulattoes, 
and  persons  of  mixed  blood  to  the  third  generation,  male 
or  female,  of  twenty  years  of  age  or  more,  should  pay 
the  same  levies  as  other  taxables.5  Complaint  was  made 
of  these  immigrants  "  that  several  of  them  have  intermarried 
with  the  white  inhabitants  of  this  province;  in  contempt 
of  the  acts  and  laws  in  those  cases  made  and  provided  " ; 
and   it   was    ordered    that   all    white    persons    so    married 

1  Debates  of  the  Convention,  p.  60. 

2  Laws  of  1746  (1st  session),  ch.  8. 
s  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  889. 

*  The  term  "  negro  "  was  not  then  so  commonly  in  use  as  in 
more  recent  days.  Until  well  into  the  second  quarter  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  it  was  the  usual  thing  in  North  Carolina  to  speak 
of  a  free  negro  as  a  "  free  person  of  color." 

5  Laws  of  1723,  ch.  5. 


237]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  69 

be  subject  to  the  same  tax  as  was  imposed  on  the  negroes. 
This,  it  will  be  seen,  would  apply  more  especially  to  white 
women  married  to  negro  men,  since  negro  women  mar- 
ried to  white  men,  unless  they  were  younger  than  sixteen 
years,  would  come  under  the  former  provision  of  the  law. 
How  many  there  were  of  this  class  we  have  no  means  of 
knowing.  The  law  of  1760  to  regulate  the  collection  of 
taxes  re-enacted  the  provisions  of.  these  two  laws,  except 
that  persons  of  mixed  blood  wer$  to  be  taxed  to  the  fourth 
instead  of  to  the  third  generation.  This  law  continued  in 
force  till  the  end  of  the  colonial  period.1  This  bore  hardly 
on  free  negroes.  In  1755  a  petition  came  to  the  Assembly 
from  the  counties  of  Granville,  Northampton,  and  Edge- 
combe, praying  for  relief.  The  lower  house  of  the  Assembly 
"  resolved  that  the  matters  in  the  said  petition  contained  are 
reasonable,  and  that  the  committee  appointed  to  revise  the 
laws  receive  a  clause  or  clauses  to  be  inserted  in  the  said 
laws  for  their  relief." 2  It  was  ten  years  before  the  next  re- 
vision of  the  laws,  and  by  that  time  the  matter  seems  to 
have  been  reconsidered  by  the  Assembly.  Three  more 
petitions  to  the  same  effect  and  from  the  same  region  were 
presented  before  the  Revolution,  but  without  apparent  re- 
sults.3 

Not  only  must  the  free  negro  help  support,  but  he  must 
also  help  defend,  the  government.  The  instructions  to  the 
royal  governors  ordered  a  census  of  freemen  and  servants, 
so  as  to  ascertain  how  many  could  bear  arms.4  In  accord- 
ance with  the  spirit  of  these  instructions  the  militia  laws 
directed  that  "  all  freemen  and  servants  within  this  province 
between  the  age  of  sixteen  and  sixty  shall  compose  the 
militia  thereof."5     By  these  laws  an  overseer  who  had  the 

1  Laws  of  1760  (4th  session),  ch.  2,  sect.  2.  I 

2  Col.  Recs.,  V.,  295. 

•  Ibid.,  VI.,  902,  982;  VII.,  614,  624,  653,  901,  946,  954;  IX.,  97,  146, 
4  Ibid.,  V.,  1 138.     Governor  Dobbs  was  told  to  make  a  census  of 
the  people,  "  free  and  unfree,"  with  a  view  of  deciding  how  many 
of  them  are  fit  to  bear  arms  in  the  militia  of  the  province. 

8  Laws  of  1746  (2d  session),  ch.  1;  Laws  of  1760  (3d  session),  ch.  2; 
Laws  of  1764,  ch.  1;  Laws  of  1768  (2d  session),  ch.  3. 


70  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [238 

care  of  six  taxable  slaves  was  to  be  exempt  from  musters, 
and  by  the  last  two  of  these  laws  he  should  be  liable  to  a 
fine  of  forty  shillings  if  he  should  appear  at  a  muster.  Also 
free  negroes  between  the  ages  of  sixteen  and  sixty  were 
required  to  work  on  the  public  road,  as  were  also  slaves  of 
the  same  ages.1 

If  a  negro  claiming  to  be  free  should  sue  for  his  freedom, 
the  case  was  tried  in  the  white  man's  court.2  The.  procedure 
in  a  case  of  this  nature  which  has  come  down  to  us  was  as 
follows:  A  negro  presented  a  petition  stating  that  he  had 
shipped  from  St.  Thomas  with  a  certain  sea-captain  who  said 
he  was  bound  to  Europe,  but  who  had  brought  him  into  North 
Carolina.  Here  the  negro  deserted  and  took  refuge  with 
Edmond  Porter.  He  then  asked  that  he  might  be  declared 
free  of  Porter,  who  now  claimed  him  as  a  slave.  This  peti- 
tion was  presented  to  the  Chief  Justice,  who  ordered  the 
Provost  Marshal  to  take  the  body  of  the  petitioner  and 
produce  it  at  the  next  term  of  the  General  Court.  Porter 
was  furnished  with  a  copy  of  the  petition  and  served  with 
a  writ  of  scire  facias  to  appear  at  the  said  court  and  show  why 
the  petitioner  should  not  be  adjudged  free.  In  the  mean- 
time the  Provost  Marshal  was  ordered  to  hire  the  petitioner 
to  some  one  who  would  give  bond  to  return  him  to  the 
next  court.  When  the  court  met,  evidence  was  introduced, 
arguments  were  made,  and  without  reference  to  a  jury  the 
verdict  was  rendered  by  the  Court  itself.  As  the  records 
have  it:  "  The  arguments  on  both  sides  being  by  the  Court 
fully  heard  and  understood,  it  is  considered  &  ordered  that 
the  said  petition  be  dismist." 

The  law  of  1741,  which  has  already  been  so  often  cited, 
had  a  provision  on  a  subject  of  a  similar  nature.  Any  per- 
son who  should  import  or  sell  as  a  slave  any  free  person  from 
any  Christian  country,  or  a  Turk  or  a  Moor8  in  amity  with 
England,  should  on  conviction  pay  to  the  person  from  whom 

1  Laws  of  1764  (1st  session),  ch.  3,  sect.  9. 

2  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  702,  703. 

s  Notice  that  Africans  are  not  included. 


239]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  71 

the  slave  should  recover  his  liberty  double  the  price  paid  for 
the  said  free  person;  and  the  importer  or  seller  must  give 
bond  of  £500  to  carry  the  said  free  person  back  to  the 
country  from  which  he  was  brought.  Suit  could  be 
brought  here  on  complaint  to  a  justice  of  the  peace,  who  was 
directed  to  call  the  alleged  offender  before  him  and  to  bind 
him  over  to  the  next  court.  There  the  case  must  be  deter- 
mined without  formal  process  of  law.1  This  was  as  fair  to 
the  plaintiff  as,  all  things  considered,  it  could  have  been 
made;  but  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  negro  who 
brought  a  petition  under  this  act  labored  under  the  disad- 
vantage of  not  being  able  to  give  evidence  against  a  white 
man.  In  many  cases  the  negro's  chief  witnesses  must  have 
been  negroes.  This  law  was  intended  to  cover  also  cases  of 
the  illegal  enslavement  of  persons  not  negroes. 

Indian  Slavery. — The  first  slaves  in  America  were  Indians. 
The  unsuspecting  natives  of  the  West  Indies  were  seized 
almost  from  the  first  by  the  Spaniards  and  made  to  work  the 
mines.2  Although  Las  Casas  succeeded  in  substituting  the 
more  vigorous  negroes  for  the  Indians,  he  did  not  render  the 
enslavement  of  the  latter  entirely  impossible.  The  Indians 
taken  prisoners  in  war  continued  to  be  held  as  slaves 
throughout  the  English  colonies  on  the  mainland.  This  was 
in  keeping  with  a  recognized  custom  of  the  Indians  them- 
selves. In  a  few  cases,  too,  the  whites  who  landed  along 
unsettled  coasts  could  not  resist  the  temptation  to  entice  the 
natives  on  their  ship  and  sail  away  to  sell  them  in  the  settled 
colonies  elsewhere.  The  first  intimation  we  have  of  Indian 
slavery  in  North  Carolina  is  of  the  latter  sort.  Lawson, 
writing  of  the  New  England  people  who  had  attempted  in 
1660  to  plant  a  colony  at  the  mouth  of  the  Cape  Fear,  says 
they  were  driven  off  by  the  Indians,  some  of  whose  children 
they  had  sent  to  the  North  under  pretext  of  educating  them. 
The  Indians  became  suspicious  that  the  children  had  been 

1  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  24,  sects.  23  and  24. 

'  For  an  excellent  brief  description  of  this  phase  of  American 
slavery,  see  Fiske,  The  Discovery  of  America,  II.,  pp.  427  et  seq. 


72  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [240 

sent  away  into  slavery,  and  became  so  hostile  that  the  whites 
left.1 

Of  slaves  taken  in  war  we  have  very  slight  mention  during 
the  seventeenth  century.  No  serious  war  occurred  between 
the  settlers  and  the  natives  until  the  Tuscarora  war  of  171 1 
and  1 712.  A  few  were  captured  before  this  and  a  few  were 
imported  as  other  slaves.  So  far  as  the  laws  reveal,  no  differ- 
ence was  made  between  them  and  negro  slaves  in  regard  to 
rights,  duties,  and  condition  of  life.  They  were  thrown 
closely  with  the  negroes,  and  the  fact  that  they  eventually 
disappeared  indicated  that  they  intermarried  with,  and  were 
absorbed  by,  the  large  body  of  blacks.  Dr.  Hawks  is  per- 
haps right  in  supposing  that  they  were  used  chiefly  to  hunt 
and  fish  for  their  masters,  while  the  harder  work  of  the  field 
was  left  to  negroes.2 

The  conditions  of  capturing  Indians  for  slaves  are  clearly 
shown  in  the  account  of  the  Tuscarora  war.  When  the 
attack  began  Governor  Hyde  sent  to  South  Carolina  for  aid. 
It  is  of  interest  to  us  that  he  directed  his  agent  there  not  to 
fail  to  represent  to  that  government  "  the  great  advantage 
may  be  made  of  slaves,  there  being  many  hundreds  of  them, 
women  and  children;  may  we  not  believe  three  or  four 
thousand?"3  History  does  not  say  what  effect  this  argu- 
ment had  on  the  South  Carolina  authorities — perhaps  none 
at  all;  but  it  does  say  that  the  Indian  allies  that  came  from 
the  South  took  back  a  great  number  of  slaves  from  the  con- 
quered people.  The  Indians,  said  Colonel  Pollock,  as  soon 
as  they  had  taken  the  fort  and  secured  their  slaves,  marched 
away  straight  to  their  homes.4  Tom  Blount,  chief  of  a  tribe 
of  friendly  Indians,  also  had  his  captives  for  slaves.  He  pro- 
posed to  attack  a  certain  small  tribe  in  which  he  thought 

1  Another  reason  given  for  their  departure  was  the  sterility  of 
the  soil.  Perhaps  both  had  something  to  do  with  it.  See  Lawson, 
History  of  North  Carolina,  pp.  73,  74;  and  Hawks,  History  of 
North  Carolina,  II.,  73. 

2  Hawks,  History  of  North  Carolina,  II.,  229,  and  Brickell,  Natural 
History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  42. 

8  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  900.  *  Ibid.,  II.,  30. 


241]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  73 

there  might  not  be  enough  people  to  give  each  of  his  own 
warriors  a  slave,  and  he  accordingly  asked  the  Council  to 
promise  some  reward,  as  blankets,  to  those  who  might  not 
happen  to  have  slaves  allotted  to  them.1  Most  of  the  slaves 
taken  in  this  war  were  sent  out  of  the  country.2  This  was 
probably  because  of  the  difficulty  of  making  tractable  slaves 
of  them  in  their  old  haunts,  or  their  liability  to  escape, 
or  the  friction  that  might  arise  with  the  unconquered 
remnant  of  the  tribe  if  they  saw  their  brethren  continually  in 
servitude.  When  the  Indians  took  these  captives  they  do 
not  seem  to  have  intended  to  use  them  any  considerable 
time.  They  were  taken  as  booty,  and  no  doubt  soon  came 
into  the  possession  of  slave-traders.  These  were  carried  to 
other  colonies,  a  good  many  going,  it  seems,  to  New  Eng- 
land, since  Massachusetts  in  1712,  and  Connecticut  in  1716, 
passed  laws  against  the  importation  of  Indian  slaves.  The 
objection  was  that  they  were  fierce  and  caused  trouble.3 
These  slaves  sold  for  about  £10  each.4  First  and  last  more 
than  700  of  them  were  captured  and  sold  before  the  struggle 
was  ended. 

There  was  no  further  trouble  with  the  Indians  until  the 
French  and  Indian  wars  about  the  middle  of  the  century. 
At  this  time  the  Cherokee  Indians  who  lived  on  the  western 
frontier  went  to  war  against  the  English.  In  1760  the 
Assembly  raised  troops  to  suppress  the  hostilities.  They 
offered  to  any  one  who  took  captive  "  an  enemye  Indian  "  the 
right  to  hold  him  as  a  slave.  If  such  an  Indian  should  be 
killed  the  captor  was  to  receive  £10  from  the  public  treasury.5 
This  amount  was  probably  less  than  the  regular  price  of 

1  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  305.  2  Ibid.,  I.,  826,  and  II.,  52. 

1  See  Steiner,  History  of  Slavery  in  Connecticut,  Johns  Hopkins 
University  Studies,  Series  XL,  pp.  14,  15.  They  seem  to  have 
kept  some  of  the  captives  for  themselves.  For  instance,  the 
Meherrins  took  two  children  for  slaves,  which  they  possibly  meant 
to  rear  as  such.  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  117.  Women  and  children  cap- 
tured in  war  seem  to  have  been  saved,  perhaps  for  slaves.  Cf. 
Brickell,  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  310,  311,  320. 

*  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  52. 

6  Laws  of  1760  (3d  session),  ch.   1,   sect.    13. 


74  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [242 

such  slaves;  for  if  equal  to  that  price  the  captor  would  have 
been  tempted  to  kill  the  captive  so  as  to  avoid  the  trouble 
of  keeping  him.  We  have  no  record  of  how  many  Indians 
were  taken  in  this  war.  They  were  probably  few,  and  were 
soon  absorbed  in  the  now  considerable  body  of  blacks  which 
were  being-  brought  to  the  frontier. 


243]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  75 


CHAPTER  V. 

WHITE    SERVITUDE. 

The  first  slaves  that  we  hear  of  in  North  Carolina  were 
white  people,  and  their  masters  were  Indians.  Strachey,  in 
his  Travayle  into  Virginia,1  speaks  of  a  story  that  he  had  from 
the  Indians  of  an  Indian  chief,  Eyanoco,  who  lived  at  Rita- 
noe,  somewhere  in  the  region  to  the  south  of  Virginia,  and 
who  had  seven  whites  who  escaped  out  of  the  massacre  at 
Roanoke,  and  these  he  used  to  beat  copper.  It  is  not  im- 
probable that  there  is  a  shadow  of  truth  in  the  statement, 
although  the  details  must  be  fictitious.  That  the  Indians 
of  the  colony  later  on  did  enslave  the  whites  whom  they 
could  take  in  their  waters,  or  who  were  shipwrecked  off 
the  coast,  we  know  from  the  preamble  of  an  act  of  the 
Assembly  about  1707.2  This  form  of  white  servitude  left 
no  trace  in  the  life  of  the  colony. 

The  first  laborers  that  the  English  took  to  the  New  World 
colonies  were  whites,  who  during  the  first  years  of  their  resi- 
dence were  obliged  to  serve  the  settlers  in  the  capacity  of 
bonded  servants.  These  people  were  commonly  called  "  serv- 
ants "  or  "  Christian  servants,"  and  as  such  are  to  be  distin- 
guished from  slaves.  In  regard  to  them,  as  well  as  to  the 
slaves,  their  history  as  it  related  to  North  Carolina  begins  in 
Virginia.  There  were  three  sources  of  the  supply  of  these  serv- 
ants: 1.  There  were  indented  servants,  people  of  no  means 
who,  being  unable  to  pay  for  passage  to  America,  agreed  to 
assign  themselves  for  a  certain  period  to  some  ship-captain  on 
condition  that  when  he  reached  Virginia  he  might  transfer 

1  Published  in  Hakluyt  Society  Publications.     See  p.  26. 
a  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  674. 


76  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [244 

his  right  for  money  to  some  one  who  would  maintain  and 
work  the  servant  for  the  given  period.  2.  Transported  felons, 
who  were  such  criminals,  vagabonds,  or  other  obnoxious 
persons  as  were  sent  to  the  colonies  by  order  of  the  English 
courts.  3.  Kidnapped  persons,  usually  children,  who  were 
stolen  by  traders  or  ship-captains  in  the  London  or  Liver- 
pool streets  and  taken  to  America,  where  they  were  assigned 
till  of  age  to  such  planters  as  would  pay  the  prices  demanded 
for  their  passages.  From  these  three  sources  many  people 
came  to  Virginia  during  the  first  sixty  years  of  its  settlement. 
At  the  time,  however,  at  which  North  Carolina  was  being 
settled,  the  importation  of  these  people  was  being  checked.1 
This  was  due  to  at  least  three  causes:  1.  The  British  gov- 
ernment was  actually  exerting  itself  to  replace  the  white 
servants  with  negro  slaves.  In  this  the  King  was  interested. 
In  1661  the  Royal  African  Company  was  organized.  The 
Duke  of  York  was  at  the  head  of  the  enterprise  and  the 
King  was  a  large  stockholder.2  2.  The  conscience  of  the  Eng- 
lish public  was  awakening  to  the  violations  of  right  which 
the  traders  perpetrated  on  those  whom  they  allured  by  false 
promises,  or  forced  by  fraud,  to  go  with  them.  These  two 
causes  acted  together  in  1664  when  a  commission  of  inquiry, 
with  the  Duke  of  York  at  its  head,  was  appointed  to  report 
on  the  condition  of  such  exportation  of  servants.  At  the 
same  time  arrangements  were  provided  by  which  indented 
servants  going  to  the  colonies  of  their  own  free  will  might 
register  their  indentures  at  an  office  created  for  that  purpose. 
Public  sentiment  thus  aroused  continued  to  grow  until  in 
1686  an  Order  of  Council  was  issued,  which  directed:  (a)  that 
all  contracts  between  emigrant  servants  and  their  masters 
should  be  executed  before  two  magistrates  and  duly  regis- 
tered; (b)  that  no  adult  should  be  taken  away  but  by  his  or 
her  own  consent,  and  no  child  without  the  consent  of  the 
parent  or  master;  (c)  that  in  cases  of  children  under  fourteen 

1  Ballagh,  White  Servitude  in  the  Colony  of  Virginia,  Johns  Hop- 
kins Studies,  Series  XIII.,  292-297,  and  349,  note. 

2  Doyle,  Virginia,  Maryland  and  the  Carolinas,  p.  386. 


245]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  77 

the  consent  of  the  parent  as  well  as  the  master  must  be 
obtained,  unless  the  parents  were  unknown.1  The  process 
was  supplemented  by  an  order  issued  in  1671  to  stop  the 
transportation  of  felons  to  the  continental  colonies.2  3.  The 
incoming  of  negro  slaves,  who,  when  the  experimental  stage 
of  slavery  was  past,  were  seen  to  be  cheaper  than  white 
servants,  was  probably  the  most  powerful  of  all  the 
causes.  The  rivalry  was  between  the  whites  and  the  blacks. 
The  blacks  won.  It  is  impossible  not  to  see  in  this  an 
analogous  process  to  that  by  which  negro  slavery  supplanted 
Indian  slavery  in  the  West  Indies.  The  abuses  connected 
with  Indian  slavery  touched  the  conscience  of  the  people, 
and  negroes  who  could  better  stand  slavery  were  introduced 
to  replace  it.  The  abuses  connected  with  white  servitude 
touched  the  hearts  of  the  British  people,  and  again  the  negro 
was  called  in  to  bear  the  burden  of  the  necessary  labor.  In"f 
each  case  it  was  a  survival  of  the  fittest.  Both  Indian  slavery 
and  white  servitude  were  to  go  down  before  the  black  man's 
superior  endurance,  docility,  and  labor  capacity. 

The  checking  of  the  introduction  of  white  servitude  just 
at  that  time  saved  the  colony  of  North  Carolina  for  slavery. 
Whatever  servants  were  now  taken  thither  would  be  carried 
into  the  place  in  ever  decreasing  rnimbers.  Another  cause 
operated  to  deprive  the  colony  of  even  that  number  of  serv- 
ants which  would  under  these  conditions  have  been 
its  normal  share.  This  was  the  poor  harbors  and  the  con- 
sequent lack  of  direct  trade  with  Europe.  The  few  ships 
that  came  through  the  inlets  of  the  Currituck,  Albemarle, 
and  Pamlico  Sounds  brought  few  servants  to  be  indented 
to  the  colonists.  Furthermore,  the  poor  economic  condi- 
tions of  those  early  days,  when  the  farms  were  small3  and 
the  exports  inconsiderable,  would  have  made  it  an  unsafe 

1  Doyle,  Virginia,  Maryland  and  the  Carolinas,  p.  385. 

3  Ballagh,  loc.  cit.,  294-295. 

8  See  the  author's  Landholding  in  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina, 
in  The  Law  Quarterly  Review  (London),  April,  1895,  160,  161 ;  also 
cf.  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  100. 


78  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [246 

venture  for  a  trader  to  have  tried  to  dispose  of  a  shipload  of 
servants.1 

A  few  servants  very  probably  came  to  the  colony  from  the 
first.  In  the  Concessions  of  1665  the  Proprietors  offered 
all  masters  or  mistresses  already  in  the  colony  eighty  acres 
of  land  for  each  able-bodied  manservant  whom  they  had 
brought  in,  armed  and  victualled  for  six  months,  and  forty 
acres  for  each  weaker  servant,  "  as  women,  children,  and 
slaves."  Those  who  should  come  in  during  the  next  three 
years  were  to  have  sixty  and  thirty  acres  respectively  instead 
of  eighty  and  forty  acres  as  just  stated.  Those  who  should 
come  later  than  that  should  get  varying  other  amounts.' 
This  system  was  continued  in  its  existing  form  for  some  time, 
but  toward  the  end  of  the  century  it  settled  down  to  the 
habit  of  giving  each  man  who  came  into  the  colony  fifty 
acres  for  every  person,  bond  or  free,  whom  he  brought  in 
with  him.3  A  further  inducement  was  offered  to  the  serv- 
ants themselves.  The  Concessions  of  1665  offered  to  every 
Christian  servant  already  in  the  colony  forty  acres  at  the 
expiration  of  his  or  her  period  of  servitude.  Those  coming 
later  were  to  have  smaller  amounts.  This  inducement 
could  not  have  brought  many  servants  into  the  government, 
for  two  years  later  they  were  offered  fifty  acres  on  the  expira- 
tion of  their  terms  of  service.  Although  this  offer  was  not 
mentioned  in  the  instructions  after  1681,4  it  seems  to  have 
been  allowed  as  late  as  1737,5  and  perhaps  later. 

The  Fundamental  Constitutions,  whose  spirit  was  entirely 

1  South  Carolina  had  good  harbors,  and  it  may  be  asked  why  it 
did  not  get  more  white  servants.  The  negroes  were  introduced  in 
large  numbers  from  the  first.  This  was  due  to  two  facts:  It  was 
somewhat  later  in  settlement  than  North  Carolina,  and  its  first 
people  came  largely  from  Barbadoes,  where  slavery  had  been  exten- 
sively in  use.  These  men  taught  the  colony  the  use  of  slaves  from 
an  early  date  in  its  history. 

2  The  Concessions  of  1665  were  the  first  formal  terms  offered  to 
prospective  settlers.     See  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  87,  88. 

8  Ibid.,  I.,  334;  cf.  also  ibid.,  I.,  865.     See  above,  p.  17,  note  2. 

*  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  334. 

0  Brickell,  Natural  History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  268. 


247]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  79 

feudal,  provided  for  white  servitude  in  that  they  tried  to 
re-establish  the  mediaeval  leet  men  nnd  leet  women.  They  as- 
sumed the  existence  of  such  persons  and  directed  that  on 
every  manor  they  should  be  subject  to  the  lord  of  the 
manor  without  appeal.  Such  servants  should  not  leave  the 
lord's  land  without  his  written  permission.  Whenever  a  leet 
man  or  leet  woman  should  marry,  the  lord  of  each  should 
give  the  pair  ten  acres  of  land,  for  which  he  must  not  take 
as  rent  more  than  one-eighth  of  the  yearly  produce.  It  was 
also  stipulated  that  "whoever  shall  voluntarily  enter  him- 
self a  leet  man  in  the  registry  of  the  county  court  shall  be  a 
leet  man,"  and  "  all  children  of  leet  men  shall  be  leet  men, 
and  so  to  all  generations."  This  impossible  feature  of  an 
impossible  system,  it  is  needless  to  say,  was  never  put  into 
operation.1 

In  the  early  period  of  North  Carolina  there  was  con- 
tinual complaint  that  the  people  harbored  runaway  servants. 
Governor  Nicholson  made  the  charge  in  1691,2  and  Edward 
Randolph,  Surveyor  General,  repeated  the  charge  in  1696." 
The  situation  of  North  Carolina  was  favorable  to  Virginia 
runaways,  and  it  is  likely  that  when  servants  left  their  masters 
in  that  province  they  took  refuge  in  the  swamps  and  forests 
to  the  southward.  But  there  is  nothing  to.  show  that  North 
Carolina  encouraged  such  runaways.  Henderson  Walker 
wrote  in  1699  that  the  law  for  apprehending  runaway 
negroes  was  adequate.5  He  must  have  referred  to  the  law 
we  find  on  the  statute  book  in  171 5.  By  that  law  we  learn 
that  any  Christian  servant  who  ran  away  from  his  master 
should  on  being  captured  be  compelled  to  serve  above  his 
regular  period  of  servitude  double  the  time  he  was  away, 
and  in  addition  such  longer  time  as  the  court  should  deem 

1  For  a  more  extended  discussion  of  the  Fundamental  Consti- 
tions  see  the  author's  Constitutional  Beginnings  of  North  Carolina, 
Johns  Hopkins  University  Studies,  Series  XII.,  pp.  131-139.  Also 
see  Col.  Recs.  on  leet  men,  I.,  191,  192. 

2  Col.  Recs.,  I.,  371,  514,  515. 

3  Ibid.,  I.,  467.  4  Ibid.,  I.,  514. 


80  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [248 

sufficient  to  repay  the  master  for  whatever  damage  he  may 
have  sustained  (sect.  2).  This  provision  was  incorporated  in 
the  law  of  1741.1  As  many  servants  ran  away  in  North 
Carolina  itself  as  in  Virginia,  it  seems.  John  Urmstone,  who 
seems  here  to  have  had  nothing  to  gain  by  an  exaggeration, 
said  in  1716,  "  White  servants  are  seldom  worth  the  keeping 
and  never  stay  out  the  time  indented  for."  2 

The  white  servants  fared  better  than  the  slaves.  In  the 
first  place,  they  were  vastly  better  than  the  negroes.  In  many 
instances  they  were  people  of  much  worth  who  had  met  with 
misfortune,  or  who  having  been  poor  in  the  first  place  had 
taken  advantage  of  this  opportunity  to  make  their  fortunes 
in  the  New  World.  Also,  they  were  Christians  and  they 
would  eventually  be  freemen  and  citizens.  There  was  even 
at  that  time  a  well  developed  beginning  of  the  later 
Southern  idea  which  instinctively  recognized  the  race  dis- 
tinction between  the  whites  and  the  blacks.  The  law  of  171 5 
declared  that  any  servant  over  sixteen  years  of  age  who  was 
imported  without  indentures  should  be  bound  out  for  five 
years,  but  if  he  were  under  sixteen  years  of  age  he  should  be 
bound  out  until  he  was  twenty-two  years  of  age.  The  age 
of  such  a  servant  was  to  be  determined  by  the  precinct  court. 
If  the  master  who  held  the  unindented  servant  did  not  take 
him  to  the  precinct  court  within  six  months,  the  period  of 
service  should  be  for  five  years.  As  the  law  of  1741  was 
stricter  than  that  of  1715  in  its  dealings  with  the  slave,  so 
it  was  more  humane  in  its  dealings  with  white  servants. 
It  guaranteed  the  rights  of  the  servant  by  providing  that  no 
imported  Christian  should  be  deemed  a  servant  unless  the 
importer  could  show  a  written  agreement  for  service  (sect.  1). 

The  rights  of  the  master  over  the  servant,  as  well  as  the 
servant's  rights  against  his  master,  were  fixed  by  law.  As 
to  the  former,  the  law  of  171 5  was  not  very  explicit;  it 
simply  provided  that  any  servant  who  laid  violent  hands  on 
his  master  or  overseer  should,  proof  being  made,  receive 
such  corporal  punishment  as  the  courts  should  think  suffi- 

1  Laws  of  1741,  ch.  24,  sect.  2.  *  Col.  Recs.,  II.,  261. 


249]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  81 

cient.  The  law  of  1741,  in  this  respect  also  milder  than 
that  of  1715,  provided  that  disobedient  servants  should  be 
tried  before  a  justice  of  the  peace,  and  on  conviction  by 
the  testimony  of  one  or  more  witnesses  should  suffer  cor- 
poral punishment,  not  to  exceed  twenty  lashes,  as  the  court 
might  determine. 

On  the  other  hand  the  law  of  1715  required  every  master  to 
provide  for  all  his  servants,  imported  or  otherwise  indented, 
competent  diet,  clothing  and  lodging;  and  it  further  directed 
that  no  master  should  "  exceed  the  bounds  of  moderation  in 
correcting  them  beyond  their  demerits."  Any  servant  hav- 
ing a  just  complaint  against  his  master  was  to  go  to  the 
nearest  magistrate,  who  should  bind  over  the  master  to  the 
next  precinct  court  and,  if  he  thought  necessary,  take  a 
bond  that  the  plaintiff  should  not  be  abused  in  the  meantime. 
The  law  of  1741  reaffirmed  these  provisions,  and  added  that 
no  master  should  "  at  any  time  whip  his  servant  naked 
without  the  order  from  a  Justice  of  the  Peace."  The  pen- 
alty for  the  violation  of  this  law  was  forty  shillings  fine, 
which  might  be  recovered  by  the  wronged  servant  on  peti- 
tion to  the  county  court,  provided  it  be  applied  for  in  six 
months.  The  method  of  taking  up  such  a  case  was  as  it 
had  been  in  171 5,  except  that  the  case  was  to  be  tried  by  the 
county  court  without  formal  process  of  law,  and  that  now 
the  court  might  at  discretion  decide  what  might  be  the  neces- 
sary diet,  clothing,  lodging,  or  correction.  If  the  master 
did  not  agree  to  observe  such  a  decision,  the  court  was  to 
order  the  said  servant  to  be  sold  at  public  vendue  for  the 
balance  of  his  time,  the  cost  being  deducted  and  the  re- 
mainder of  the  amount  realized  going  to  the  master.  If, 
however,  such  a  servant  had  become  sick  or  in  any  way 
incapable,  so  that  he  could  not  be  sold  for  enough  to  pay 
cost  or  charges,  he  should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  the 
churchwardens,  and  the  master  must  provide  a  necessary 
support  till  the  time  of  indenture  should  be  expired.  All 
servants  were  likewise  given  the  right  of  coming  into  the 
county  court  without  formal  action  in  order  to  make  com- 
plaint for  their  freedom,  their  freedom  dues,  or  their  wages. 


82  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [250 

The  habit  of  freeing  from  their  obligations  sick  or  incap- 
able servants  had  evidently  become  an  abuse.  The  same 
law  tried  to  prevent  such  a  practice.  It  provided  that  a 
master  discharging  a  sick  servant  before  he  was  free  and 
not  trying  to  heal  him  should  be  fined  £5.  Such  a  sick 
servant  must  not  be  liberated  if  by  so  doing  the  servant 
"  may  perish  or  become  a  charge  to  the  parish."  If  the  law 
was  violated  in  this  particular  the  servant  was  sent  to  the 
churchwardens,  to  be  supported  at  the  charge  of  the  master 
till  the  expiration  of  the  period  of  service.  But  if  it  should 
appear  that  the  servant  had  carelessly  or  viciously  brought 
his  sickness  on  himself,  he  should  serve  extra  time,  at  the 
discretion  of  the  court,  to  pay  his  master's  loss  and  the 
cost  of  his  recovery.  This  might  have  put  the  master  at 
the  mercy  of  his  servant;  but  to  protect  him  it  was  enacted 
that  in  this,  as  in  all  others  cases  of  absence  from  service, 
if  the  servant  made  to  the  court  a  groundless  complaint 
against  his  master  he  should  serve  after  the  period  of  in- 
denture double  the  time  so  lost.  It  is  impossible  not  to 
see  how  this  may  have  operated  to  the  entire  injury  of  a 
friendless  servant.  Furthermore,  it  was  provided  that  a 
servant  put  in  jail  should  serve  an  extra  period  double  the 
time  in  jail  and  also  long  enough  to  pay  the  cost  of  the 
suit.  If  a  servant  were  convicted  of  stealing  from  his  master 
he  was  to  serve  extra  time,  at  the  discretion  of  the  court,  to 
repay  the  amount  of  the  theft.  To  prevent  such  stealing  the 
same  penalty  was  imposed  on  those  who  bought  goods  from 
servants  that  was  imposed  on  those  who  traded  with  slaves. 

The  contemporary  authorities  usually  speak  in  unfavor- 
able terms  of  the  morals  of  the  first  settlers  in  North  Caro- 
lina.1 It  was  charged  that  it  was  a  place  where  loose  living 
abounded.  This  must  have  been  an  exaggeration;  yet  it  is 
possibly  true  that  the  inaccessibility  of  the  place  and  the 

1  Brickell  says:  "The  generality  of  them  live  after  a  loose  and 
lascivious  manner."  Later  on  he  adds:  "There  were  certainly  per- 
sons of  both  sexes  temperate,  frugal,  good  economists  "  (Natural 
History  of  North  Carolina,  p.  37). 


251]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  83 

lack  of  religion  and  education  favored  the  incoming  of  a  con- 
siderable undesirable  element.  There  were,  however,  from 
the  first  a  great  many  people  of  as  good  social  habits  as 
could  be  found  anywhere.  In  such  a  condition  of  affairs  the 
morals  of  the  servants,  who  came  closest  to  the  more  corrupt 
class,  must  have  had  a  bad  tendency.  The  laws  of  171 5 
and  of  1741  indicate  as  much.  The  former  provided  that  if 
any  woman  servant  bore  a  bastard  child  during  her  period  of 
service  she  should  serve  two  years  extra,  besides  what  punish- 
ment she  should  be  liable  to  for  fornication.  If  she  came 
into  the  province  with  child  she  should  not  come  within  the 
provision  of  this  act.  If  she  were  with  child  by  her  master 
she  should  be  taken  in  hand  by  the  churchwardens  and  sold 
for  two  years  after  the  expiration  of  her  time,  the  money  to 
go  to  the  parish.  This  law,  it  will  be  seen,  left  the  offending 
master,  whose  position  gave  him  an  opportunity  to  be  chiefly 
responsible  for  his  servant's  sin,  entirely  unpunished,  except 
as  he  lost  by  the  failure  of  her  services  or  as  he  might  be 
dealt  with  for  fornication  and  adultery.  If  she  were  to  have 
a  child  by  a  negro,  mulatto,  or  Indian,  she  must  serve  her 
master  two  years  extra  as  just  stated,  and  over  and  above 
that  she  should  pay  to  the  churchwardens  immediately  on 
the  expiration  of  that  time  six  pounds  for  the  use  of  the 
parish  "  or  be  sold  four  years  for  the  use  aforesaid." 

The  act  of  1741  dealt  with  this  matter  more  leniently.  It 
stated  that,  "  Whereas  many  women  servants  are  begotten 
with  child  by  free  men  or  servants,  to  the  great  prejudice  of 
their  master  or  mistress  whom  they  serve,"  accordingly,  any 
woman  servant  bearing  a  child  should  for  such  offense  be 
judged  by  the  county  court  to  serve  her  master  for  one  year 
after  the  expiration  of  her  contract.  If  she  should  be  delivered 
of  a  child  by  her  master  during  this  period  she  should  be 
sold  by  the  churchwardens  for  the  benefit  of  the  church 
for  one  year  after  the  term  of  service.  If  the  father  of  the 
child  were  a  negro,  mulatto,  or  Indian,  the  mother  should 
be  sold  for  two  years  after  her  term  of  service,  the  money 
to  go  to  the  parish,  and  the  child  should  be  bound  out  by 


84  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [252 

the  county  court  till  he  reached  the  age  of  thirty-one  years. 
Here  again  there  was  no  punishment  for  the  seducing 
master.  It  is  also  evident  that  the  sin  of  the  servant  would 
be  an  advantage  to  the  master,  since  he  would  thereby 
secure  her  service  for  a  longer  period.  We  have  not  the 
least  evidence  that  such  a  thing  did  happen,  yet  it  is  possible 
that  a  master  might  for  this  reason  have  compassed  the  sin 
of  his  serving-woman. 

These  were  restrictions  on  bastardy.  As  for  legal  union 
of  indented  servants,  the  Marriage  Act  of  1741 1  provided 
that  no  minister  or  civil  officer  should,  under  penalty  of  £5 
to  be  paid  to  the  master,  marry  any  servant  or  servants 
without  the  written  consent  of  the  masters  of  the  same;  and 
that  all  servants  so  married  should  serve  one  year  after  the 
expiration  of  their  terms.  This  gave  the  master  power  to 
prevent  marriage  when  he  should  think  his  interests  would 
be  impaired  thereby;  and  probably  many  masters  used  their 
power  to  prevent  the  marriage  of  servant  women.  At  the 
same  time  it  must  have  increased  unlawful  unions.  It  cer- 
tainly seems  to  have  been  considered  a  hardship  by  the 
Baptists.  Just  before  the  Revolution  the  Kehukee  Asso- 
ciation was  asked  if  the  union  of  servants  who  had  not  been 
married  according  to  the  laws  of  the  land  should  be  held 
binding  before  God.  The  answer  was  "  yes."  Again  it  was 
asked:  "Is  it  lawful  to  hold  a  member  in  fellowship  who 
breaks  the  marriage  of  servants?"     The  answer  was  "no."2 

The  law  of  171 5  provided  that  when  a  master  freed  a 
Christian  servant  he  must  furnish  him  with  three  barrels  of 
Indian  corn  and  two  new  suits  of  wearing  apparel  of  the 
value  at  least  £5.  But  if  the  servant  were  a  man,  a  gun  in 
good  condition  might  be  substituted  for  one  suit  of  clothes. 
These  were  known  as  freedom  dues.  The  law  of  1741  pro- 
vided that,  on  the  day  of  his  freedom,  there  should  be  given 
to  every  servant  who  did  not  receive  yearly  wages,  £3  pro- 
clamation money  and  one  suit  of  clothes.     Brickell  says  that 

1  Laws  of  1 741,  ch.  1,  sect.  7. 

2  Biggs,  History  of  the  Kehukee  Baptist  Association,  47  and  48. 


253]  the  Colony  of  North  Carolina.  85 

he  should  also  be  allowed  to  take  up  fifty  acres  of  land. 
He  adds  that  most  freed  men  preferred  to  sell  this  and  be- 
come overseers  for  some  man  who  had  several  plantations. 
These  plantations  were  chiefly  devoted  to  raising-  cattle, 
horses  and  hogs.  An  overseer  was  usually  allowed  one- 
seventh  of  the  calves,  foals,  grain  and  tobacco  and  one-half 
of  the  pigs  raised  on  the  plantation.  If  he  were  thrifty  he 
was  soon  able  to  stock  a  plantation  of  his  own.  Many  thus 
became  men  of  wealth  and  good  standing.  The  majority, 
however,  were  not  so  steady.  These  were  forced  to  work 
for  their  daily  bread.  This  was  the  beginning  of  the  poor 
whites.1 

One  other  provision  of  the  law  of  1741  ought  to  be 
noticed.  In  the  undeveloped  condition  of  the  colony  it 
was  often  necessary  to  import  skilled  labor  by  contract. 
The  importers  of  such  labor  often  found  themselves  duped 
by  the  men  whom  they  imported.  It  was  now  enacted 
that  artisans  imported  under  contract,  who  were  found  not 
to  understand  the  trades  for  which  they  had  been  imported, 
might  have  their  wages  reduced  or  the  contract  entirely 
annulled  on  conviction  in  the  county  court.  If  the  person 
who  thus  came  in  under  contract  should  refuse  to  work,  or 
absent  himself  from  his  master,  he  could  be  called  into  the 
county  court  and  there  be  ordered  to  make  satisfaction,  and 
for  every  day  he  was  idle  be  compelled  to  serve  two  days 
instead. 

In  North  Carolina,  as  elsewhere,  vagrants  might  be  made 
to  swell  the  number  of  white  servants.  In  1755  the  As- 
sembly passed  a  law  on  this  subject2  which  continued  in 
force  till  the  Revolution.  It  provided  that  all  vagrants  who 
should  be  taken  up  should  "  be  whipped  in  the  same  man- 
ner as  runaways  are  from  constable  to  constable,"  to  the 
counties  where  their  wives  and  children  formerly  lived,  and 
there  give  bond  for  good  behavior,  "  and  for  betaking  him  or 

1  Brickell,   Natural   History,  pp.  268-269. 

2  Laws  of  1755,  ch.  4;  Laws  of  1760  (4th  session),  ch.  13;  Laws  of. 
1766,  ch.  17;  and  Laws  of  1770,  ch.  29. 


86  Slavery  and  Servitude  in  [254 

herself  to  some  lawful  calling  or  honest  labor."  If  they  were 
to  fail  to  do  this  they  were  to  be  hired  out  for  one  year, 
the  money  to  be  used  in  paying  the  expenses  of  the  arrest, 
and  the  balance,  if  any,  to  go  to  the  families  of  the  said 
vagrants.  Not  only  vagrants,  but  criminals,  might  be  sold 
into  servitude  at  the  direction  of  the  court.  How  much 
there  was  of  this  we  do  not  know.  In  1723,  one  Thomas 
Dunn,  who  confessed  several  petit  larcenies,  was  condemned 
to  be  tied  to  the  tail  of  a  cart  and  be  given  thirty-nine 
lashes  well  laid  on,  and  no  one  claiming  him  as  a  servant, 
to  be  sold  for  four  years  to  any  one  who  would  take  him 
out  of  the  province.1 

1  Hawks,  History  of  North  Carolina,  II.,  128. 


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Anderson,  Melville  B.,  State  University  of  Iowa;  Banoboft,  T.  Whiting,  Brown 
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sity, Mass. ;  Cook,  A.  S.,  Yale  University;  Cosijn,  P.  J.,  University  of  Leyden,  Holland; 
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VON  JAGEMANN,  H.  C.  G.,  Harvard  University;  KARSTEN,  Gustaf,  University  of  Indiana, 
Ind. ;  LANG,  Henry  R.,  The  Swain  Free  School,  Mass. ;  LEARNED,  M.  D.,  Johns  Hopklna 
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Washington.— W.  H.  Lowdermllk  &  Co.;  Montreal.— William  Foster  Brown  &  Co. 

Brentano's.  EUROPEAN  AGENTS  : 

Paris.— A.  Hermann ;   Em.  Terquem.  London.— Kegan  Paul,  Trench,  Trllbner 
Berlin.  — Puttkammer     &     Mflhlbrecht  ;  &  Co.;  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons. 

Mayer  &  Mttller.  Turin,  Florence,  and  Rome.— E.  Loe- 
Leipzig.— F.  A.  Brockhaus.  scher. 


STORED 


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Philadelphia,    1681-1887.    By  Edward  P.  Allinson,  A.  M.,  and 

Boies  Penrose,  A.  B.     444  pages.     8vo.    Cloth.    $3.00. 
Baltimore  and  the  Nineteenth  of  April,  1861.     By  George 

William  Brown,  Chief  Judge  of  the  Supreme  Bench  of  Baltimore,  and 

Mayor  of  the  City  in  1861.     176  pages.     8vo.     Cloth.    $1.00T 

Local  Constitutional  History  of  the  United  States.    By 

George  E.  Howard,  Ph.  D.  Volume  1. — Development  of  the  Township, 
Hundred  and  Shire.  542  pages.  8vo.  Cloth.  $3.00.  Volume  II.— In 
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The  Negro  in  Maryland.    By  Jeffrey  R.  Brackett,  Ph.  D.    270 

pages.     8vo.    Cloth.     $2.00. 
The   Supreme   Court   of   the   United    States.      By  W.  W. 

Willoughby,  Ph.  D.     124  pages.     8vo.     Cloth.    $1.25. 
i'Ue  Inten  mrse  between  *he  U.  S.  and  Japan.    By  Inazo 
(Ota)  NiroBE,  Ph.  D.     198  j  Cloth.    $1.25. 

State  and  Ft,      ral  Gov  cat  in  Switzerland.    By  John 

Martin  Vincent,  Ph.  D.     2i  s.  31oth.    $1.50. 

anish  Institutions  of  t^     S<      >■».   8St.    By  Frank  W.  Black- 
mar,  Ph.  D.     380  pages.     8vo.     (    >tl       $2.00. 

An  Iutroduetion  to  the  St  id      <  f   .he  Constitution.     By 

Morris  M.  Cohn.    250  pages.    8  o.      '"  t  i.    $1.50. 
The  Old  English  Manor.       y  .  ndrews,  Ph.  D.    280  pages. 

8vo.    Cloth.    $1.50. 
America:   Its  Geographies  1  History,  1492-1892.    By  Walter 

B.  Scaife,  Ph.  D.     176  pages,     sVo.     (loth.     SI. 50. 
Florentine   Uife   during   tiae    £ lenai  usance.     By  Walter  B. 

Scaife,  Ph.  D.     256  pages.     8vo.    C  loth.     $  1.50. 
The  Southern  Quakers  and  Slaver.  .    By  Stephen  B.  Weeks. 

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